IT is familiar knowledge that the earth which we
inhabit is a globe of somewhat less than 8000 miles in diameter, being one
of a series of eleven which revolve at different distances around the sun,
and some of which have satellites in like manner re-volving around them.
The sun, planets, and satellites, with the less intelligible orbs termed
comets, are comprehensively called the solar system, and if we take as the
uttermost bounds of this system the orbit of Uranus (though the comets actually
have a wider range), we shall find that it occupies a portion of space not
less than three thousand six hundred millions of miles in extent The mind
fails to form an exact notion of a portion of space so immense; but some
faint idea of it may be obtained from the fact, that, if the swiftest

race-horse ever known had begun to traverse it, at
full speed, at the time of the birth of Moses, he would only as yet have
accomplished half his journey. It has long been concluded amongst astronomers,
that the stars, though they only appear to our eyes as brilliant points,
are all to be considered as suns, representing so many solar systems, each
bearing a general resemblance to our own. The stars have a brilliancy and
apparent magnitude which we may safely presume to be in proportion to their
actual size and the distance at which they are placed from us. Attempts
have been made to ascertain the distance of some of the stars by calculations
founded on parallax, it being previously understood that, if a parallax
of so much as one second, or the 3600th of a degree, could be ascertained
in any one instance, the distance might be assumed in that instance as not
less than 19,200 millions of miles! In the case of the most brilliant star,
Sirius, even this minute parallax could not be found; from which of course
it was to be inferred that the distance of that star is something beyond
the vast distance which has been stated. In some others, on which the experiment
has been tried, no sensible parallax could he detected; from

which the same inference was to be made in their
case. But a sensible parallax of about one second has been ascertained in
the case of the double star, á á, of the constellation
of the Centaur,* and one of the third of that amount for the double star,
61 Cygni; which gave reason to presume that the distance of the former might
be about twenty thousand millions of miles, and the latter of much greater
amount. If we suppose that similar intervals exist between all the stars,
we shall readily see that the space occupied by even the comparatively small
number visible to the naked eye, must be vast beyond all powers of conception.
The number visible to the eye is about three thousand; but when a telescope
of small power is directed to the heavens, a great number more come into
view, and the number is ever increased in proportion to the increased power
of the instrument. In one place, where they are more thickly sown than elsewhere,
Sir William Herschel reckoned that fifty thousand passed over a field of
view two degrees in breadth in a single hour. It was first surmised by the
ancient philosopher, Democritus, that the faintly white zone which

* By Mr. Henderson, Professor of Astronomy
in the Edinburgh University, and Lieutenant Meadows.

spans the sky under the name of the Milky Way, might
be only a dense collection of stars too remote to be distinguished. This
conjecture has been verified by the instruments of modern astronomers, and
some speculations of a most remarkable kind have been formed in connexion
with it. By the joint labours of the two Herschels, the sky has been "gauged"
in all directions by the telescope, so as to ascertain the conditions of
different parts with respect to the frequency of the stars. The result has
been a conviction that, as the planets are parts of solar systems, so are
solar systems parts of what may be called astral systems-that is, systems
composed of a multitude of stars, bearing a certain relation to each other
The astral system to which we belong, is conceived to be of an oblong, flattish
form, with a space wholly or comparatively vacant in the centre, while the
extremity in one direction parts into two. The stars are most thickly sown
in the outer pans of this vast ring, and these constitute the Milky Way.
Our sun is believed to be placed in the southern portion of the ring, near
its inner edge, so that we are presented with many more stars, and see the
Milky Way much more clearly, in that direction, than towards the north,
in which line our eye has

to traverse the vacant central space. Nor is this
all. Sir William Herschel, so early as 1783, detected a motion in our solar
system with respect to the stars, and announced that it was tending towards
the star λ, in the constellation Hercules. This has been generally
verified by recent and more exact calculations, which fix on a point in
Hercules, near the star 143 of the 17th hour, according to Piozzi's catalogue,
as that towards which our sun is proceeding. It is, therefore, receding
front the inner edge of the ring. Motions of this kind, through such vast
regions of space, must be long in producing any change sensible to the inhabitants
of our planet, and it is not easy to grasp their general character; but
grounds have nevertheless been found for supposing that not only our sun,
but the other suns of the system pursue a wavy course round the ring from
west to east, crossing and recrossing the middle of the annular circle.
Some stars will depart more, others less, from either side of the circumference
of equilibrium, according to the places in which they are situated, and
according to the direction and the velocity with which they are put in motion.
Our sun is

probably one of those which depart furthest from
it, and descend furthest into the empty space within the ring."* According
to this view, a time may come when we shall be much more in the thick of
the stars of our astral system than we are now, and have of course much
more brilliant nocturnal skies; but it may be countless ages before the
eyes which are to see this added resplendence shall exist.

The evidence of the existence of other astral
systems besides our own is much more decided than might be expected, when
we consider that the Dearest of them must needs be placed at a mighty interval
beyond our own. The elder Herschel, directing his wonderful tube towards
the sides of our system, where stars are planted most rarely, and
raising the powers of the instrument to the required pitch, was enabled
with awe-struck mind to see suspended in the vast empyrean astral systems,
or, as he called them, firmaments, resembling our own. Like light cloudless
to a certain power of the telescope, they resolved themselves, under a greater
power, into stars, though these generally

* Professor Mossotti, on the Constitution
of the Sidereal System, of which the Sun forms a part. -London, Edinburgh,
and Dublin Philosophical Magazine, February, 1843.

seemed no larger than the finest particles of diamond
dust. The general forms of these systems are various; but one at least has
been detected as bearing a striking resemblance to the supposed form of
our own. The distances are also various, as proved by the different degrees
of telescopic power necessary to bring them into view. The farthest observed
by the astronomer were estimated by him as thirty-five thousand times more
remote than Sirius, supposing its distance to be about twenty thousand millions
of miles It would thus appear, that not only does gravitation keep our earth
in its place in the solar system, and the solar system in its place in our
astral system, but it also may be presumed to have the mightier duty of
preserving a local arrangement between that astral system and an immensity
of others, through which the imagination is left to wander on and on without
limit or stay, save that which is given by its inability to grasp the unbounded

The two Herschels have in succession made some
other most remarkable observations on the regions of space. They have found
within the limits of our astral system, and generally in its outer fields,
a great number of objects which, from their foggy appearance, are called nebul; some

of vast extent and irregular figure, as that in the
sword of Orion, which is visible to the naked eye; others of shape more
defined; others, again, in which small bright nuclei appear here and there
over the surface. Between this last form and another class of objects, which
appear as clusters of nuclei with nebulous matter around each nucleus, there
is but a step in what appears a chain of related things. Then, again, our
astral space shews what are called nebulous stars, namely, luminous spherical
objects, bright in the centre and dull towards the extremities. These appear
to be only an advanced condition of the class of objects above described.
Finally, nebulous stars exist in every stage of concentration, down to that
state in which we see only a common star with a slight bur around
it. It may be presumed that all these are but stages in a progress, just
as if, seeing a child, a boy, a youth, a middle-aged, and an old man together,
we might presume that the whole were only variations of one being. Are we
to suppose that we have got a glimpse of the process through which a sun
goes between its original condition, as a mass of diffused nebulous matter,
and its full-formed state as a compact body? We shall see how far such
an idea is supported by

other things known with regard to the occupants of
space, and the laws of matter.

A superficial view of the astronomy of the solar
system gives us only the idea of a vast luminous body (the sun) in the centre,
and a few smaller, though various sized bodies, revolving at different distances
around it; some of these, again, having smaller planets (satellites) revolving
around them. There are, however, some general features of the solar system,
which, when a profounder attention makes us acquainted with them, strike
the mind very forcibly.

It is, in the first place, remarkable, that the
planets all move nearly in one plane, corresponding with the centre
of the sun's body. Next, it is not less remarkable that the motion of the
sun on its axis, those of the planets around the sun, and the satellites
around their primaries,* and the motions of all on their axes, are in one
direction-namely, from west to east. Had all these matters been left to
accident, the chances against the uniformity which we find would have

* The orbitual revolutions of the satellites
of Uranus have not yet been clearly scanned, It has been thought that
their path is retrograde compared with the rest. Perhaps this may be
owing to a bouleversement of the primary, for the inclination
of its equator to the ecliptic is admitted to be unusually high; but
the subject is altogether so obscure, that nothing can be founded on
it.

been, though calculable, inconceivably great. Laplace
states them at four millions of millions to one, It is thus powerfully impressed
on us, that the uniformity of the motions, as well as their general adjustment
to one plane, must have been a consequence of some cause acting throughout
the whole system.

Some of the other relations of the bodies are
not less remarkable. The primary planets shew a progressive increase of
bulk and diminution of density, from the one nearest to the sun to that
which is moat distant. With respect to density alone, we find, tarring water
as a measure and counting it as one, that Saturn is 1/3 3/2, or less than
half; Jupiter, 11/24; Mars,3 2/7; Earth, 4 1/2; Venus, 5 11/15; Mercury,
9 9/10; or about the weight of lead. Then the distances are curiously relative.
It has been found that if we place the following line of numbers,-

0 3 6 12 24 48 96 192,

and add 4 to each, we shall have a series denoting
the respective distances of the planets from the quo. It will stand thus-

goes on from the second on the lft hand in a succession
of duplications, or multiplications by 2. Surely there is here a most surprising
proof of the unit, which I am claiming for the solar system. It was remarked
when this curious relation was first detected, that there was a want of
a planet corresponding to 28; the difficulty was afterwards considered as
in a great measure overcome, by the discoverer of four small planets revolving
at nearly one mean distance from the sun, between Mars and Jupiter. The
distances bear an equally interesting mathematical relation to the times
of the revolutions round the sun. It has been found that, with respect to
any two planets, the squares of the times of revolution are to each other
in the same proportion as the cubes of their mean distances,- a most surprising
result, for the discovery of which the world was indebted to the illustrious
Kepler. Sir John Herschel truly observes- "When we contemplate the constituents
of the planetary system from the point of view which this relation affords
us, it is no longer mere analogy which strikes us, no longer a general resemblance
among them, as individuals independent of each other, and circulating about
the sun, each according to its own peculiar nature, and con-

nected with it by its own peculiar tie. The resemblance
is now perceived to be a true family likeness; they are bound up
in one chain-interwoven in one web of mutual relation and harmonious agreement,
subjected to one pervading influence which extends from the centre to the
farthest limits of that great system, of which all of them, the Earth included,
must henceforth be regarded as members."*

Connecting what has been observed of the series
of nebulous stars with this wonderful relationship seen to exist among the
constituents of our system, and further taking advantage of the light afforded
by the ascertained laws of matter, modern astronomers have suggested the
following hypothesis of the formation of that system.

Of nebulous matter in its original state we know
too little to enable us to suggest how nuclei should be established in it.
But, supposing that, from a peculiarity in its constitution, nuclei are
formed, we know very well how, by virtue of the law of gravitation, the
process of an aggregation of the neighbouring matter to those nuclei should
proceed, until masses more or less solid should become detached from the
rest. It is a well-

known law in physics that, when fluid matter collects
towards or meets in a centre, it establishes a rotatory motion. See minor
results of this law in the whirlwind and the whirlpool-nay, on so humble
a scale as the water sinking through the aperture of a funnel. It thus becomes
certain that when we arrive at the stage of a nebulous star, we have a rotation
on an axis commenced.

Now, mechanical philosophy informs us that, the
instant a mass begins to rotate, there is generated a tendency to fling
off its outer portions-in other words, the law of centrifugal force begins
to operate. There are, then, two forces acting in Opposition to each other,
the one attracting to, the other throwing from, the centre.
While these remain exactly counterpoised, the mass necessarily continues
entire; but the least excess of the centrifugal over the attractive force
would be attended with the effect of separating the mass and its outer parts.
These outer parts would, then, be left as a ring round the central body,
which ring would continue to revolve with the velocity possessed by the
central mass at the moment of separation, but not necessarily participating
in any changes afterwards undergone by that body. This is a process which
might be repeated as soon as a

new excess arose in the centrifugal over the attractive
forces working in the parent mass. It might, indeed, continue to be repeated,
until the mass attained the ultimate limits of the condensation which its
constitution imposed upon it. From what cause might arise the periodical
occurrence of an excess of the centrifugal force? If we suppose the agglomeration
of a nebulous mass to be a process attended by refrigeration or cooling,
which many facts render likely, we can easily understand why the outer parts,
hardening under this process, might, by virtue of the greater solidity thence
acquired, begin to present some resistance to the attractive force. As the
solidification proceeded, this resistance would become greater, though there
would still be a tendency to adhere. Meanwhile, the condensation of the
central mass would be going on, tending to produce a separation from what
may now be termed the solidifying crust. During the contention between
the attractions of these two bodies, or parts of one body, there would probably
be a ring of attenuation between the mass and its crust. At length, when
the central mass had reached a certain stage in its advance towards solidification,
a separation would take place, and the crust would become a detached

ring. It is clear, of course, that some law presiding
over the refrigeration of heated gaseous bodies would determine the stages
at which rings were thus formed and detached. We do not know any such law,
but what we have seen assures us it is one observing and reducible to mathematical
formul.

If these rings consisted of matter nearly uniform
throughout, they would probably continue each in its original form; but
there are many chances against their being uniform in constitution. The
unavoidable effects of irregularity in their constitution would be to cause
them to gather towards centres of superior solidity, by which the annular
form would, of course, be destroyed. The ring would, in short, break into
several masses, the largest of which would be likely to attract the lesser
onto itself. The whole mass would then necessarily settle into a spherical
form by virtue of the law of gravitation; in short, would then become a
planet revolving round the sun. If rotatory motion would, of course, continue,
and satellites might then be thrown off in turn from its body in exactly
the same way as the primary planets had been thrown off from the sun. The
rule, if I can be allowed so to call it, receive a

striking support from what appear to be its exceptions.
While there are many chances against the matter of the rings being sufficiently
equable to remain in the annular form till they were consolidated, it might
nevertheless be otherwise in some instances; that is to say, the equableness
might, in those instances, be sufficiently great. Such was probably the
case with the two rings around the body of Saturn, which remain a living
picture of the arrangement, if not the condition, in which all the planetary
masses at one time stood. It may also be admitted that, when a ring broke
up, it was possible that the fragments might spherify separately. Such seems
to be the actual history of the ring between Jupiter and Mars, in whose
place we now find four planets much beneath the smallest of the rest in
size, and moving nearly at the same distance from the sun, though in orbits
so elliptical, and of such different planes, that they keep apart.

It has been seen that there are mathematical
proportions in the relative distances and revolutions of the planets of
our system. It has also been suggested that the periods in the condensation
of the nebulous mass, at which rings were disengaged, must have depended
on some par-

ticular crises in the condition of that mass, in
connexion with the laws of centrifugal force and attraction. M. Compte,
of Paris, has made some approach to the verification of the hypothesis,
by calculating what ought to have been the rotation of the solar mass at
the successive times when its surface extended to the various planetary
orbits. He ascertained that that rotation corresponded in every case
with the actual sidereal revolution of the planets, and that the rotation
of the primary planets in like manner corresponded with the orbitual periods
of the secondaries. The process by which he arrived at this conclusion
is not to be readily comprehended by the unlearned; but those who are otherwise,
allow that it is a powerful support to the present hypothesis of the formation
of the globes of space.*

* M. Compte combined Huygens's theorems
for the measure of centrifugal force with the law of gravitation, and
thus formed a simple fundamental equation between the duration of the
rotation of what he calls the producing star, and the distance of the
star produced. The constants of the equation were the radius of the
central star, and the intensity of gravity at its surface, which is
a direct consequence of its mass. Is leads direct, to the third law
of Kepler, which thus becomes unacceptable of being conceived
priori in a cosmogonical point of view. M. Compte first applied
it to the moon, and found, to his great delight, that the periodic time
of that satellite agrees within an hour or two

The nebular hypothesis, as it has been called,
obtains a remarkable support in what would at first seem to militate against
it-the existence in our firmament of several thousands of solar systems,
in which there are more than one sun. These are called double and triple
stars. Some double stars, upon which careful observations have been made,
are found to have a regular revolutionary motion round each other in ellipses.
This

with the duration which the revolution
of the earth ought to have had at the time when the lunar distance formed
the limit of the earth's atmosphere. He found the coincidence less exact,
but still very striking in every other case. In those of the planets
he obtained for the duration of the corresponding solar rotations a
value always a little less than their actual periodic times. "It is
remarkable," says he, "that this difference, though increasing as the
planet is more distant, preserves very nearly the same relation to the
corresponding periodic time, of which it commonly forms the forty-fifth
part," -showing, we my suppose, that only some small elements of the
question had been overlooked by the calculator. The defect changes to
an excess in the different systems of the satellites, where it is proportionally
greater than in the planets, and unequal in the different systems. "From
the whole of these comparisons," says he, "I deduced the following general
result:—Supposing the mathematical limit of the solar atmosphere successively
extended to the regions where the different planets are now found, the
duration of the sun's rotation was, at each of these epochs, sensibly
equal to that of the actual sidereal revolution of the corresponding
planet; and the same is true for each planetary atmosphere in relation
"-Cours de Philosophie Positif.

kind of solar system has also been observed in what
appears to be its rudimental state, for there are examples of nebulous stars
containing two and three nuclei in near association. At a certain point
in the confluence of the matter of these nebulous stars, they would all
become involved in a common revolutionary motion, linked inextricably with
each other, though it might be at sufficient distances to allow of each
distinct centre having afterwards its attendant planets. We have seen that
the law which causes rotation in the single solar masses, is exactly the
same which produces the familiar phenomenon of a small whirlpool or dimple
in the source of a stream. Such dimples are not always single. Upon the
face of a river where there are various contending currents, it may often
be observed that two or more dimples are formed near each other with more
or less regularity. These fantastic eddies, which the musing poet will sometimes
watch abstractedly for an hour, little thinking of the law which produces
and connects them, are an illustration of the wonders of binary and ternary
solar systems.

The nebular hypothesis is, indeed, supported
by so many ascertained features of the celestial scenery, and by so many
calculations of exact

science, that it is impossible for a candid mind
to refrain from giving it a cordial reception, if not to repose full reliance
upon it, even without seeking for it support of any other kind. Some other
support I trust yet to bring to it; but in the meantime, assuming its truth,
let us see what idea it gives of the constitution of what we term the universe,
of the development of its various parts, and of its original condition.

Reverting to a former illustration-if we could
suppose a number of persons of various ages presented to the inspection
of an intelligent being newly introduced into the world, we cannot doubt
that he would soon become convinced that men had once been boys, that boys
had once been infants, and, finally, that all had been brought into the
world in exactly the same circumstances. Precisely thus, seeing in our astral
system many thousands of worlds in all stages of formation, from the most
rudimental to that immediately preceding the present condition of those
we deem perfect, it is unavoidable to conclude that all the perfect have
gone through the various stages which we see in the rudimental. This leads
us at once to the conclusion that the whole of our firmament was at one
time a diffused mass of nebulous mat-

ter, extending through the space which it still occupies.
So also, of course, must have been the other astral systems. Indeed, we
must presume the whole to have been originally in one connected mass, the
astral systems being only the first division into parts, and solar systems
the second.

The first idea which all this impresses upon
us is, that the formation of bodies in space is still and at present
in progress. We live at a time when many have been formed, and many
are still forming. Our own solar system is to be regarded as completed,
supposing its perfection to consist in the formation of a series of planets,
for there are mathematical reasons for concluding that Mercury is the nearest
planet to the sun, which can, according to the laws of the system, exist.
But there are other solar systems within our astral system, which are as
yet in a less advanced state, and even some quantities of nebulous matter
which have scarcely begun to advance towards the stellar form. On the other
hand, there are vast numbers of stars which have all the appearance of being
fully formed systems, if we are to judge from the complete and definite
appearance which they present to our vision through the telescope. We have
no means of judging of the seniority of systems;

but it is reasonable to suppose that, among the many,-some
are older than ours. There is, indeed, one piece of evidence for the probability
of the comparative youth of our system, altogether apart from human traditions
and the geognostic appearances of the surface of our planet. This consists
in a thin nebulous matter, which is diffused around the sun to nearly the
orbit of Mercury, of a very oblately spheroidal shape. This matter, which
sometimes appears to our naked eyes, at sunset, in the form of a cone projecting
upwards in the line of the sun's path, and which bears the name of the Zodiacal
Light, has been thought a residoum or last remnant of the concentrating
matter of our system, and thus may be supposed to indicate the comparative
recentness of the principal events of our cosmogony. Supposing the surmise
and inference to be correct, and they may be held as so far supported by
more familiar evidence, we might with the more confidence speak of our system
as not amongst the elder born of Heaven, but one whose various phenomena,
physical and moral, as yet lay undeveloped, while myriads of others were
fully fashioned and in complete arrangement. Thus, in the sublime chronology
to which we are directing our inquiries, we first find ourselves called
upon

to consider the globe which we inhabit as a child
of the sun, elder than Venus and her younger brother Mercury, but posterior
in date of birth to Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus; next to regard our
whole system as probably of recent formation in comparison with many of
the stars of our firmament. We must, however, be on our guard against supposing
the earth as a recent globe in our ordinary conceptions of time. From evidence
afterwards to be adduced, it will be seen that it cannot be presumed to
be less than many hundreds of centuries old. How much older Uranus may be
no one can tell, much less how more aged may be many of the stars of our
firmament, or the stars of other firmaments than ours.

Another and more important consideration arises
from the hypothesis; namely, as to the means by which the grand process
is conducted. The nebulous matter collects around nuclei by nature of the
law of attraction. The agglomeration brings into operation another physical
law, by force of which the eparate masses of matter are either made to
rotate singly, or, in addition to that single motion, are set into a coupled
revolution in ellipses. Next centrifugal force comes into play, flinging
off portions of the rotating masses, which

become spheres by virtue of the same law of attraction,
and are held in orbits of revolution round the central body by means of
a composition between the centrifugal and gravitating forces. All, we see,
is done by certain laws of matter, so that it becomes a question of extreme
interest, what are such laws? All that can yet be said, in answer, is,
that we see certain natural events proceeding in an invariable order under
certain conditions, and thence infer the existence of some fundamental arrangement
which, for the bringing about of these events, has a force and certainty
of action similar to, but more precise and unerring than those arrangements
which human society makes for its own benefit, and calls laws. It is remarkable
of physical laws, that we see them operating on every kind of scale as to
magnitude, with the same regularity and perseverance. The tear that falls
from childhood's cheek is globular, through the efficacy of that same law
of mutual attraction of particles which made the sun and planets round.
The rapidity of Mercury is quicker than that of Saturn, for the same reason
that, when we wheel a ball round by a string and make the string wind up
round our fingers, the ball always flies quicker and quicker as

the string is shortened. Two eddies in a stream,
as has been stated, falll into a mutual revolution a the distance of a couple
of inches, through the same cause which makes a pair of suns link in mutual
revolution at the distance of millions of miles. There is, we might say,
a sublime simplicity in this indifference of the grand regulations to the
vastness or minuteness of the field of their operation. Their being uniform,
too, throughout space, as far as we can scan it, and their being so unfailing
in their tendency to operate, so that only the proper conditions are presented,
afford to our minds matter for the gravest consideration. Nor should it
escape our careful notice that the regulations on which all the laws of
matter operate, are established on a rigidly accurate mathematical basis.
Proportions of numbers and geometrical figures rest at the bottom of the
whole. All these considerations, when the mind is thoroughly prepared for
them, tend to raise our ideas with respect to the character of physical
laws, even though we do not go a single step further in the investigation.
But it is impossible for an intelligent mind to stop there. We advance from
law to the cause of law, and ask, What is that? Whence have come all these
beautiful regulations?

Here science leaves us, but only to conclude, from
other grounds, that there is a First Cause to which all others are secondary
and ministrative, a primitive almighty will, of which these laws are merely
the mandates. That great Being, who shall say where is his dwelling-place,
or what his history! Man pauses breathless at the contemplation of a subject
so much above his finite faculties, and only can wonder and adore!

CONSTITUENT MATERIALS OF THE EARTH

AND
OF THE OTHER BODIES OF SPACE.

______

THE nebulr
hypothesis almost necessarily supposes matter to have originally formed
one mass. We have seen that the same physical laws preside over the whole.
Are we also to presume that the constitution of the whole was uniform?
-that is to say, that the whole consisted of similar elements. It seems
difficult to avoid coming to this conclusion, at least under the qualification
that, possibly, various bodies, under peculiar circumstances attending their
formation, may contain elements which are wanting, and lack some which are
present in others, or that some may entirely consist of elements in which
others are entirely deficient.

What are
elements? This is a term applied by the chemist to a certain limited number
of sub-

stances, (fifty-four
or fifty-five are ascertained,) which, in their combinations, form all the
matters of every kind present in and about our globe. They are called elements,
or simple substances, because it has hitherto been found impossible to reduce
them into others, wherefore they are presumed to be the primary bases of
all matters. It has, indeed, been surmised that these so-called elements
are only modifications of a primordial form of matter, brought about under
certain conditions; but if this should prove to be the case, it would little
affect the view which we are taking of cosmical arrangements. Analogy would
lead us to conclude that the combinations of the primordial matter, forming
our so-called elements, are as universal or as liable to take place everywhere
as are the laws of gravitation and centrifugal force. We must therefore
presume that the gases, the metals, the earths, and other simple substances,
(besides whatever more of which we have no acquaintance,) exist or are liable
to come into existence under proper conditions, as well in the astral system,
which is thirty-five thousand times more distant than Sirius, as within
the bounds of our own solar system or our own globe.

gradients, or
only one, is liable to infinite varieties of condition under different circumstances,
or, to speak more philosophically, under different laws. As a familiar illustration,
water, when subjected to a temperature under 32 Fahrenheit, becomes ice;
raise the temperature to 212, and it becomes steam, occupying a vast deal
more space than it formerly did. The gases, when subjected to pressure,
become liquidds; for example, carbonic acid gas, when subjected to a weight
equal to a column of water 1230 feet high, at a temperature of 32, takes
this form: the other gases require various amounts of pressure for this
transformation, but all appear to be liable to it when the pressure proper
in each case is administered. Heat is a power greatly concerned in regulating
the volume and other conditions of matter. A chemist can reckon with considerable
precision what additional amount of heat would be required to vaporise all
the water of our globe; how much more to disengage the oxygen which is diffused
in nearly a proportion of one-half throughout its solids; and, finally,
how much more would be required to cause the whole to become vaporiform,
which we may consider as equivalent to its being restored to its original
nebulous state. He can calculate with equal cer-

tainty what
would be the effect of a considerable diminution of the earth's temperature-what
changes would take place in each of its component substances, and how much
the whole would shrink in bulk.

The earth
and all its various substances have at present a certain volume in consequence
of the temperature which actually exists. When, then, we find that its matter
and that of the associate planets was at one time diffused throughout the
whole space, now circumscribed by the orbit of Uranus, we cannot doubt,
after what we know of the power of heat, that the nebulous form of matter
was attended by the condition of a very high temperature. The nebulous matter
of space, previously to the formation of stellar and planetary bodies, must
have been a universal Fire Mist, an idea which we can scarcely comprehend,
though the reasons for arriving at it seem irresistible. The formation of
systems out of this matter implies a change of some kind with regard to
the condition of the heat. Had this power continued to act with its full
original repulsive energy, the process of agglomeration by attraction could
not have gone on. We do not know enough of the laws of heat to enable us
to surmise how the

necessary change
in this respect was brought about, but we can trace some of the steps and
consequences of the process Uranus would be formed at the time when the
heat of our system's matter was at the greatest, Saturn at the next, and
so on. Now this tallies perfectly with the exceeding diffuseness of the
matter of those elder planets, Saturn being not more dense or heavy than
the substance cork. It may be that a sufficiency of heat still remains in
those planets to make up for their distance from the sun, and the consequent
smallness of the heat which they derive from his rays. And it may equally
be, since Mercury is twice the density of the earth, that its matter exists
under a degree of cold for which that planet's large enjoyment of the sun's
rays is no more than a compensation. Thus there may be upon the whole a
nearly equal experience of heat amongst all these children of the sun. Where,
meanwhile, is the heat once diffused through the system over and above what
remains in the planets? May we not rationally presume it to have gone to
constitute that luminous envelope of the sun, in which his warmth-giving
power is now held to reside? It could not be destroyed- it cannot be supposed
to have gone off into space-

it must have
simply been reserved to constitute, at the last, a means of sustaining the
many operations of which the planets were destined to be the theatre.

The tendency
of the whole of the preceding considerations is to bring the conviction
that our globe is a specimen of all the similarly-placed bodies of space,
as respects its constituent matter and the physical and chemical laws governing
it, with only this qualification, that there are possibly shades
of variation with respect to the component materials, and undoubtedly with respect to the conditions under which the laws operate, and consequently
the effects which they produce. Thus, there may be substances here which
are not in some other bodies, and substances here solid may be elsewhere
liquid or vaporiform. We are the more entitled to draw such conclusions,
seeing that there is nothing at all singular or special in the astronomical
situation of the earth. It takes its place third in a series of planets,
which series is only one of numberless other systems forming one group.
It is strikingly-if I may use such an expression- a member of a democracy.
Hence, we cannot suppose that there is any peculiarity about it which does
not probably attach to multitudes of

other bodies-in
fact, to all that are analogous to it in respect of cosmical arrangements.

It therefore
becomes a point of great interest-what are the materials of this specimen?
What is the constitutional character of this object, which may be said to
be a sample, presented to our immediate observation, of those crowds of
worlds which seem to us as the particles of the desert sand-cloud in number,
and to whose profusion there are no conceivable local limits?

The solids,
liquids, and aeriform fluids of our globe are all, as has been stated, reducible
into fifty-five substances hitherto called elementary. Six are gases; oxygen,
hydrogen, and nitrogen being the chief. Forty-two are metals, of which eleven
are remarkable as composing, in combination with oxygen, certain earths,
as magnesia, lime, alumin. The remaining six, including carbon, silicon,
sulphur, have not any general appellation.

The gas
oxygen is considered as by far the most abundant substance in our globe.
It constitutes a fifth part of our atmosphere, a third part of water, and
a large proportion of every kind of rock in the crust of the earth Hydrogen,
which forms two-thirds of water, and enters into some mineral substances,
is perhaps next. Nitrogen, of which the

atmosphere is
four-fifths composed, must be considered as an abundant substance. The metal
silicium, which unites with oxygen in nearly equal parts to form silica,
the basis of nearly a half of the rocks in the earth's crust, is, of course,
an important ingredient. Aluminium, the metallic basis of alumin, a large
material in many rocks, is another abundant elementary substance. So, also,
is carbon a small ingredient in the atmosphere, but the chief constituent
of animal and vegetable substances, and of all fossils which ever were in
the latter condition, amongst which coal takes a conspicuous place. The
familiarly-known metals, as iron, tin, lead, silver, gold, are elements
of comparatively small magnitude in that exterior part of the earth's body
which we are able to investigate.

It is remarkable
of the simple substances that they are generally in some compound form.
Thus, oxygen and nitrogen, though in union they form the aerial envelope
of the globe, are never found separate in nature. Carbon is pure only in
the diamond. And the metallic bases of the earths, though the chemist can
disengage them, may well be supposed unlikely to remain long uncombined,
seeing that contact with moisture makes them burn. Combination and re-combination
are principles largely

pervading nature.
There are few rocks, for example, that are not composed of at least two
varieties of matter, each of which is again a compound of elementary substances.
What is still more wonderful with respect to this principle of combination,
all the elementary substances observe certain mathematical proportions in
their unions. One volume of them unites with one, two, three, or more volumes
of another, any extra quantity being sure to be left over, if such there
should be. It is hence supposed that matter is composed of infinitely minute
particles or atoms, each of which belonging to any one substance, can only
(through the operation of some as yet hidden law) associate with a certain
number of the atoms of any other. There are also strange predilections amongst
substances for each other's company. One will remain combined in solution
with another, till a third is added, when it will abandon the former and
attach itself to the latter. A fourth being added, the third will perhaps
leave the first, and join the new comer.

Such is
an outline of the information which chemistry gives us regarding the constituent
materials of our globe. How infinitely is the knowledge increased in interest,
when we consider the

probability
of such being the materials of the whole of the bodies of space, and the
laws under which these everywhere combine, subject only to local and accidental
variations !

In considering
the cosmogenic arrangements of our globe, our attention is called in a special
degree to the moon.

In the nebular
hypothesis, satellites are considered as masses thrown off from their primaries,
exactly as the primaries had previously been from the sun. The orbit of
any satellite is also to be regarded as marking the bounds of the mass of
the primary at the time when that satellite was thrown off; its speed likewise
denotes the rapidity of the rotatory motion of the primary at that particular
juncture. For example, the outermost of the four satellites of Jupiter revolves
round his body at the distance of 1,180,682 miles, shewing that the planet
was once 3,675,501 miles in circumference, instead of being, as now, only
89,170 miles in diameter. This large mass took rather more than sixteen
days six hours and a half (the present revolutionary period of the outermost
satellite) to rotate on its axis. The innermost satellite must have been
formed when the planet was re-

duced to a circumference
of 309,075 miles, and rotated in about forty-two hours and a half.

From similar
inferences, we find that the mass of the earth, at a certain point of time
after it was thrown off from the sun, was no less than 482,000 miles in
diameter, being sixty times what it has since shrunk to. At that time, the
mass must have taken rather more than twenty-nine and a half days to rotate,
(being the revolutionary period of the moon,) instead of as now, rather
less than twenty-four hours.

The time
intervening between the formation of the moon and the earth's diminution
to its present size, was probably one of those vast sums in which astronomy
deals so largely, but which the mind altogether fails to grasp.

The observations
made upon the surface of the moon by telescopes, tend strongly to support
the hypothesis as to all the bodies of space being composed of similar matters,
subject to certain variations. It does not appear that our satellite is
provided with that gaseous envelope which, on earth, performs so many important
functions. Neither is there any appearance of water upon the surface; yet
that surface is, like that of our globe,

marked by inequalities
and the appearance of volcanic operations. These inequalities and volcanic
operations are upon a scale far greater than any hich now exist upon the
earth's surface. Although, from the greater force of gravitation upon its
exterior, the mountains, other circumstances being equal, might have been
expected to be much smaller than ours, they are, in many instances, equal
in height to nearly the highest of our Andes. They are generally of extreme
steepness, and sharp of outline, a peculiarity which might be looked for
in a planet deficient in water and atmosphere, seeing that these are the
agents which wear down ruggedness on the surface of our earth. The volcanic
operations are on a stupendous scale. They are the cause of the bright spots
of the moon, while the want of them is what distinguishes the duller portions,
usually but erroneously called seas. In some parts, bright volcanic matter,
besides covering one large patch, radiates out in long streams, which appear
studded with subordinate foci of the same kind of energy. Other objects
of a most remarkable character are ring mountains, mounts like those of
the craters of earthly volcanoes, surrounded immediately by vast and profound
circular pits, hollowed under the general

surface, these
again being surrounded by a circular wall of mountain, rising far above
the central one, and in the inside of which are terraces about the same
height as the inner eminence. The well known bright spot in the south-east
quarter, called by astronomers Tycho, and which can be readily distinguished
by the naked eye, is one of these ring-mountains. There is one of 200 miles
in diameter, with a pit 22,000 feet deep; that is, twice the height of tna.
It is remarkable, that the maps given by Humboldt of a volcanic district
in South America, and one illustrative of the formerly volcanic district
of Auvergne, in France, present features strikingly like many parts of the
moon's surface, as seen through a good glass.

These characteristics
of the moon forbid the idea that it can be at present a theatre of life
like the earth, and almost seem to declare that it never can become so.
But we must not rashly draw any such conclusions. The moon may be only in
an earlier stage of the progress through which the earth has already gone.
The elements which seem wanting may be only in combinations different in
those which exist here, and may yet be developed as we here find them. Seas
may yet fill the profound hollows of the surface; an atmosphere may

spread over
the whole. Should these events take place, meteorological phenomena, and
all the phenomena of organic life, will commence, and the moon, like the
earth, will become a green and inhabited world.

It is unavoidably
held as a strong proof in favour of any hypothesis, when all the relative
phenomena are in harmony with it. This is eminently the case with the nebulous
hypothesis, for here the associated facts cannot be explained on any other
supposition. We have seen reason to conclude that the primary condition
of matter was that of a diffused mass, in which the component molecules
were probably kept apart through the efficacy of heat; that portions of
this agglomerated into suns, which threw off planets; that these planets
were at first very much diffused, but gradually contracted by cooling to
their present dimensions. Now, as to our own globe, there is a remarkable
proof of its having been in a fluid state at the time when it was finally
solidifying, in the fact of its being bulged at the equator, the very form
which a soft revolving body takes, and must inevitably take, under the influence
of centrifugal force. This bulging makes the equatorial exceed the polar
diameter as 230 to 229, which has been demon-

strated to be
precisely the departure from a correct sphere which might be predicated
from a knowledge of the amount of the mass and the rate of rotation. There
is an almost equally distinct memorial of the original high temperature
of the materials, in the store of heat which still exists in the interior.
The immediate surface of the earth, be it observed, exhibits only the temperature
which might be expected to be imparted to such materials, by the heat of
the sun. There is a point, very short way down, but varying in different
climes, where all effect from the sun's rays ceases. Then, however, commences
a temperature from an entirely different cause, one which evidently has
its source in the interior of the earth, and which regularly increases as
we descend to greater and greater depths, the rate of increment being about
one degree Fahrenheit for every sixty feet; and of this high temperature
there are other evidences, in the phenomena of volcanoes and thermal springs,
as well as in what is ascertained with regard to the density of the entire
mass of the earth. This, it will be remembered, is four and a half times
the weight of water; but the actual weight of the principal solid substances
composing the outer crust is as two and a half times the weight of

water; and this,
we know, if the globe were solid and cold, should increase vastly towards
the centre, water acquiring the density of quicksilver at 362 miles below
the surface, and other things in proportion, and these densities becoming
much greater at greater depths; so that the entire mass of a cool globe
should be of a gravity infinitely exceeding four and a half times the weight
of water. The only alternative supposition is, that the central materials
are greatly expanded or diffused by some means; and by what means could
they be so expanded but by heat? Indeed, the existence of this central
heat, a residuum of that which kept all matter in a vaporiform chaos at
first, is amongst the most solid discoveries of modern science,* and the
support which it gives to Herschel's explanation of the formation of worlds
is most important. We shall hereafter see what appear to be traces of an
operation of this heat upon the surface of the earth in very remote times;
an effect, however, which has long passed entirely

*
The researches on this subject were conducted chiefly by the late Baron
Fourier, perpetual secretary to the Academy of Sciences of Paris. See
his Th orie Analytique de la Chaleur. 1822.

away. The central
heat has, for ages, reached a fixed point, at which it will probably remain
for ever, as the non-conducting quality of the cool crust absolutely prevents
it from suffering any diminution.

ALTHOUGH the
earth has not been actually penetrated to a greater depth than three thousand
feet, the nature of its substance can, in many instances, be inferred for
the depth of many miles by other means of observation. We see a mountain
composed of a particular substance, with strata, or beds of other rock,
lying against its sloped sides; we, of course, infer that the substance
of the mountain dips away under the strata which we see lying against it.
Suppose that we walk away from the mountain across the turned up edges of
the stratified rocks, and that for many miles we continue to pass over other
stratified rocks, all disposed in the same way, till by and bye we come
to a place where we begin to cross the opposite edges of the

same beds; after
which we pass over these rocks all in reverse order till we come to another
extensive mountain composed of similar material to the first, and shelving
away under the strata in the same way. We should then infer that the stratified
rocks occupied a basin formed by the rock of these two mountains, and by
calculating the thickness right through these strata, could be able to say
to what depth the rock of the mountain extended below. By such means, the
kind of rock existing many miles below the surface can often be inferred
with considerable confidence.

The interior
of the globe has now been inspected in this way in many places, and a tolerably
distinct notion of its general arrangements has consequently been arrived
at. It appears that the basis rock of the earth, as it may be called, is
of hard texture, and crystalline in its constitution. Of this rock, granite
may be said to be the type, though it runs into many varieties. Over this,
except in the comparatively few places where it projects above the general
level in mountains, other rocks are disposed in sheets or strata, with the
appearance of having been deposited originally from water; but these last
rocks have nowhere been allowed to rest in their original arrangement.

Uneasy movements
from below have broken them up in great inclined masses, while in many cases
there has been projected through the rents rocky matter more or less resembling
the great inferior crystalline mass. This rocky matter must have been in
a state of fusion from heat at the time of its projection, for it is often
found to have run into and filled up lateral chinks in these rents. There
are even instances where it has been rent again, and a newer melted matter
of the same character sent through the opening. Finally, in the crust as
thus arranged there are, in many places, chinks containing veins of metal.
Thus, there is first a great inferior mass, composed of crystalline rock,
and probably resting immediately on the fused and expanded matter of the
interior: next, layers or strata of aqueous origin; next, irregular masses
of melted inferior rock that have been sent up volcanically and confusedly
at various times amongst the aqueous rocks, breaking up these into masses,
and tossing them out of their original levels. This is an outline of the
arrangements of the crust of the earth, as far as we can observe it. It
is, at first sight, a most confused scene; but after some careful observation,
we readily detect in it a regularity and order from which much

The deposition
of the aqueous rocks, and the projection of the volcanic, have unquestionably
taken place since the settlement of the earth in its present form. The
are indeed of an order of events which we see going on, under the agency
of more or less intelligible causes, even down to the present day. We may
therefore consider them generally as comparatively recent transactions.
Abstracting them from the investigations before us, we arrive at the idea
of the earth in its first condition as a globe of its present size-namely,
as a mass, externally at least, consisting of the crystalline kind of rock,
with the waters of the present seas and the present atmosphere around it,
though these were probably in considerably different conditions, both as
to temperature and their constituent materials, from what they now are.
We are thus to presume that that crystalline texture of rock which we see
exemplified in granite is the condition into which the great bulk of the
solids of our earth were agglomerated directly from the nebulous or vaporiform
state. It is a condition eminently of combination, for such rock is invariably
composed of two or more

of four substances-silica,
mica, quartz, and hornblende- which associate in it in the form of grains
or crystals, and which are themselves each composed of a group of the simple
or elementary substances.

Judging
from the results and from still remaining conditions, we must suppose that
the heat retained in the interior of the globe was more intense, or had
greater freedom to act, in some places than in others. These became the
scenes of volcanic operations, and in time marked their situations by the
extrusion of traps and basalts from below-namely, rocks composed of the
crystalline matter fused by intense heat, and developed on the surface in
various conditions, according to the particular circumstances under which
it was sent up; some, for example, being thrown up under water, and some
in the open air, which conditions are found to have made considerable difference
in its texture and appearance. The great stores of subterranean heat also
served an important purpose in the formation of the aqueous rocks. These
rocks might, according to Sir John Herschel, become subject to heat in the
following manner:—While the surface of a particular mass of rock forms the
bed of the sea, the heat is kept at a certain distance from that surface
by the con-

tact of the
water; philosophically speaking, it radiates away the heat into the sea,
and (to resort to common language) is cooled a good way down. But when new
sediment settles at the bottom of that sea, the heat rises up to what was
formerly the surface; and when a second quantity of sediment is laid down,
it continues to rise through the first of the deposits, which then becomes
subjected to those changes which heat is calculated to produce. This process
is precisely the same as that of putting additional coats upon our own bodies;
when, of course, the internal heat rises through each coat in succession,
and the third (supposing there is a fourth above it) becomes as warm as
perhaps the first originally was.

In speaking
of sedimentary rocks, we may be said to be anticipating. It is necessary,
first, to shew how such rocks were formed, or how stratification commenced.

Geology
tells us as plainly as possible, that the original crystalline mass was
not a perfectly smooth ball, with air and water playing round it. There
were vast irregularities in the surface,- irregularities trifling, perhaps,
comparedwith the whole bulk of the globe, but assuredly vast in comparison
with any which now exist upon it.

These irregularities
might be occasioned by inequalities in the cooling of the substance, or
by accidental and local sluggishness of the materials, or by local effects
of the concentrated internal heat. From whatever cause they arose, there
they were-enormous granitic mountains, interspersed with seas which sunk
to a depth equally profound, and by which, perhaps, the mountains were wholly
or partially covered. Now, it is a fact of which the very first principles
of geology assure us, that the solids of the globe cannot for a moment be
exposed to water, or to the atmosphere, without becoming liable to change.
They instantly begin to wear down. This operation, we may be assured, proceeded
with as much certainty in the earliest ages of our earth's history, as it
does now, but upon a much more magnificent scale. There is the clearest
evidence that the seas of those days were not in some instances less than
a hundred miles in depth, however much more. The subaqueous mountains must
necessarily have been of at least equal magnitude. The system of disintegration
consequent upon such conditions would be enormous. The matters worn off,
being carried into the neighbouring depths, and there deposited, became
the components of the earliest stratified

rocks, the first
series of which is the Gneiss and Mica Slate System, or series, examples
of which are exposed to view in the Highlands of Scotland and in the West
of England. The vast thickness of these beds, in some instances, is what
attests the profoundness of the primeval oceans in which they were formed;
the Pensylvanian grawacke, a member of the next highest series, is not less
than a hundred miles in direct thickness. We have also evidence that the
earliest strata were formed in the presence of a stronger degree of heat
than what operated in subsequent stages of the world, for the laminae of
the gneiss and of the mica and chlorite schists are contorted in a way which
could only be the result of a very high temperature. It appears as if the
seas in which these deposits were formed, had been in the troubled state
of a caldron of water nearly at boiling heat. Such a condition would probably
add not a little to the disintegrating power of the ocean.

The earliest
stratified rocks contain no matters which are not to be found in the primitive
granite. They are the same in material, but only changed into new forms
and combinations; hence they have been called by Mr. Lyell metamorphic rocks.
But how comes it that some of them are composed

almost exclusively
of one of the materials of granite; the mica schists, for example, of mica-
the quartz rocks, of quartz, &c.? For this there are both chemical
and mechanical causes. Suppose that a river has a certain quantity of material
to carry down, it is evident that it will soonest drop the larger particles,
and carry the lightest farthest on. To such a cause is it owing that some
of the materials of the worn-down granite have settled in one place and
some in another.* Again, some of these materials must be presumed to have
been in a state of chemical solution in the primeval seas. It would be,
of course, in conformity with chemical laws, that certain of these materials
would be precipitated singly, or in modified combination, to the bottom,
so as to form rocks by themselves.

The rocks
hitherto spoken of contain none of those petrified remains of vegetables
and animals which abound so much in subsequently formed rocks, and tell
so wondrous a tale of the past history of our globe. They simply contain,
as has been said, mineral materials derived from the primitive mass, and
which appear to have been formed into strata in seas of vast depth. The

absence from
these rocks of all traces of vegetable and animal life, joined to a consideration
of the excessive temperature which seems to have prevailed in their epoch,
has led to the inference that no plants or animals of any kind then existed.
A few geologists have indeed endeavoured to shew that the absence of organic
remains is no proof of the globe having been then unfruitful or uninhabited,
as the heat to which these rocks have been subjected at the time of their
solidification, might have obliterated any remains of either plants or animals
which were included in them. But this is only an hypothesis of negation;
and it certainly seems very unlikely that a degree of heat sufficient to
obliterate the remains of plants or animals when dead, would ever allow
of their coming into or continuing in existence.

COMMENCEMENT
OF ORGANIC LIFE-SEA PLANTS, CORALS, ETC.

WE can scarcely
be said to have passed out of these rocks, when we begin to find new conditions
in the earth. It is here to be observed that the subsequent rocks are formed,
in a great measure, of matters derived from the substance of those which
went before, but contain also beds of limestone, which is to no small extent
composed of an ingredient which has not hitherto appeared. Limestone is
a carbonate of lime, a secondary compound, of which one of the ingredients,
carbonic acid gas, presents the element carbon, a perfect novelty
in our progress. Whence this substance? The question is the more interesting,
from our knowing that carbon is the main ingredient in organic things. There
is reason to

believe that
its primeval condition was that of a gas, confined in the interior of the
earth, and diffused in the atmosphere. The atmosphere still contains about
a two-thousandth part of carbonic acid gas, forming the grand store from
which the substance of each year's crop of herbage and grain is derived,
passing from herbage and grain into animal substance, and from animals again
rendered back to the atmosphere in their expired breath, so that its amount
is never impaired. Knowing this, when we hear of carbon beginning to appear
in the ascending series of rocks, we are unavoidably led to consider it
as marking a time of some importance in the earth's history, a new era of
natural conditions, one in which organic life has probably played a part.

It is not
easy to suppose that, at this period, carbon was adopted directly in its
gaseous form into rocks; for, if so, why should it not have been taken into
earlier ones also? But we know that plants take it in, and transform it
into substance; and we also know that there are classes of animals (marine
polypes) which are capable of appropriating it, in connexion with lime,
(carbonate of lime,) from the waters of the ocean, provided it be there
in soltion; and this substance do these animals

deposit in masses
(coral reefs) equal in extent to many strata. It has even been suggested,
on strong grounds of probability, that a class of limestone beds are simply
these reefs subjected to subsequent heat and pressure.

The appearance,
then, of limestone beds in the early part of the stratified series, may
be presumed to be connected with the fact of the commencement of organic
life upon our planet, and, indeed, a consequent and a symptom of it.

It may not
be out of place here to remark, that carbon is presumed to exist largely
in the interior of the earth, from the fact of such considerable quantities
of it issuing at this day, in the form of carbonic acid gas, from fissures
and springs. The primeval and subsequent history of this element is worthy
of much attention, and we shall have to revert to it as a matter greatly
concerning our subject. Delabeche estimates the quantity of carbonic acid
gas locked up in every cubic yard of limestone, at 16,000 cubic feet. The
quantity locked up in coal, in which it forms from 64 to 75 per cent., must
also be enormous. If all this were disengaged in a gaseous form, the constitution
of the atmosphere would undergo a change, of which the first effect would
be the extinction of life in

all land animals.
But a large proportion of it must have at one time been in the atmosphere.
The atmosphere would then, of course, be incapable of supporting life in
land animals. It is important, however, to observe that such an atmosphere
would not be inconsistent with a luxuriant land vegetation; for experiment
has proved that plants will flourish in air containing one-twelfth of this gas, or 166 times more than the present charge of our atmosphere.
The results which we observe are perfectly consistent with, and may be said
to presuppose an atmosphere highly charged with this gas, from about the
close of the primary non- fossiliferous rocks to the termination of the
carboniferous series, for there we see vast deposits (coal) containing carbon
as a large ingredient, while at the same time the leaves of the Stone
Book present no record of the contemporaneous existence of land animals.

The hypothesis
of the connexion of the first limestone beds with the commencement of organic
life upon our planet is supported by the fact, that in these beds we find
the first remains of the bodies of animated creatures. My hypothesis may
indeed be unsound; but, whether or not, it is clear, taking organic remains
as upon the whole

a faithful chronicle,
that the deposition of these limestone beds was coeval with the existence
of the earliest, or all but the earliest, living creatures upon earth.

And what
were those creatures? It might well be with a kind of awe that the uninstructed
inquirer would wait for an answer to this question. But nature is simpler
than man's wit would make her, and behold, the interrogation only brings
before us the unpretending forms of various zoophytes and polypes, together
with a few single and double- valved shell-fish (mollusks), all of them
creatures of the sea. It is rather surprising to find these before any vegetable
forms, considering that vegetables appear to us as forming the necessary
first link in the chain of nutrition; but it is probable hat there were
sea plants, and also some simpler forms of animal life, before this period,
although of too slight a substance to leave any fossil trace of their existence.

The exact
point in the ascending stratified series at which the first traces of organic
life are to be found is not clearly determined. Dr. M'Culloch states that
he found fossil orthocerata (a kind of shell-fish) so early as the gneiss
tract of Loch Eribol, in Sutherland; but Messrs. Sedgwick and

Murchison, on
a subsequent search, could not verify the discovery. It has also been stated,
that the gneiss and mica tract of Bohemia contains some seams of grawacke,
in which are organic remains; but British geologists have not as yet attached
much importance to this statement. We have to look a little higher in the
series for indubitable traces of organic life.

Above the
gneiss and mica slate system, or group of strata, is the Clay Slate and
Grawache Slate System; that is to say, it is higher in the order of
supraposition, though very often it rests immediately on the primitive granite.
The sub-groups of this system are in the following succession upwards:—
1, hornblende slate; 2, chiastolite slate; 3, clay date; 4, Snowdon rocks,
(grawacke and conglomerates;) 5, Bala limestone; 6, Plynlymmon rocks, (grawacke
and grawacke slates, with beds of conglomerates.) This system is largely
developed in the west and north of England, and it has been well examined,
partly because some of the slate beds are extensively quarried for domestic
purposes. If we overlook the dubious statements respecting Sutherland and
Bohemia, we have in this "system" the first appearances of life upon our
planet. The animal remains are chiefly con-

fined to the
slate beds, those named from Bala, in Wales, being the most prolific. Zoophyta,
polyparia, crinoidea, conchifera, and crustacea,* are the orders
of the animal kingdom thus found in the earliest of earth's sepulchres.
The orders are distinguished without difficulty, from the general
characters of the creatures whose remains are found; but it is only in this
general character that they bear a general resemblance to any creatures
now existing. When we come to consider specific characters, we see that
a difference exist-that, in short, the species and even genera are no longer
represented upon earth. More than this, it will be found that the earliest
species comparatively soon gave place to others, and that they are not represented
even in the next higher group of rocks. One important remark has been made,
that a comparatively small variety of species is found in the older rocks,
although of some particular ones the remains are very abundant; as, for
instance, of a

*
In the Cumbrian limestone occur "calamoporae, lithodendra, cyathophylla,
and orbicula "-Philips. The asaphus and trinucleos (crustacea)
have been found respectively in the slate rocks of Wales, and the limestone
beds of the grawacke group in Bohemia. That fragments of crinoidea,
though of no determinate species, occur in this system, we have the
authority of Mr. Murchison.-Silurian System, p. 710.

species of asaphus,
which is found between the laminae of some of the slate rocks of Wales,
and the corresponding rocks of Normandy and Germany in enormous quantities.

Ascending
to the next group of rocks, we find the traces of life become more abundant,
the number of species extended, and important additions made in certain
vestiges of fuci, or seaplants, and of fishes. This group of rocks has been
called by English geologists, the Siluriarian System, because largely
developed at the surface of a district of western England, formerly occupied
by a people whom the Roman historians call Silures It is a series of sandstones,
limestones, and beds of shale (hardened mud), which are classed in the following
sub-groups, beginning with the undermost:—1, Llandillo rocks, (darkish calcareous
flagstones;) 2 and 3, two groups called Caradoc rocks; 4, Wenlock shale,
5, Wenlock limestone; 6, Lower Ludlow rocks, (shales and limestones;) 7,
Aymestry limestone; 8, Upper Ludlow rocks, (shales and limestone, chiefly
micaceous.) From the lowest beds upwards, there are polypiaria, though most
prevalent in the Wenlock limestone; conchifera, a vast number of genera,
but all of the order brachiopoda, (including tere-

bratula, pentamerus,
spirifer, orthis, leptaena;) mollusca, of several orders and many genera,
(including turritella, orthoceras, nautilus, bellerophon;) crustacea, all
of them trilobites, (including trinucleus, asaphus, calamene.) A little
above the Llandillo rocks, there have been discovered certain convoluted
forms, which are now established as annelids, or sea-worms, a tribe of creatures
still existing, (nereidina and serpulina,) and which may often be found
beneath stones on a seabeach. One of these, figured by Mr. Murchison, is
furnished with feet in vast numbers all along its body, like a centipede.
The occurrence of annelids is important, on account of their character and
status in the animal kingdom. They are red- blooded and hermaphrodite, and
form a link of connexion between the annulosa (white-blooded worms) and
a humble class of the vertebrate. The Wenlock limestone is most remarkable
amongst all the rocks of the Silurian system, for organic remains. Many
slabs of it are wholly composed of corals, shells, and trilobites, held
together by shale. It contains many genera of crinoidea and polypiaria,
and it is thought that some beds of it are wholly the production of the
latter creatures,

or are, in other
words, coral reefs transformed by heat and pressure into rocks. Remains
of fishes, of a very minute size, have been detected by Mr. Philips in the
Aymestry limestone, being apparently the first examples of vertebrated animals
which breathed upon our planet. In the upper Ludlow rocks, remains of six
genera of fish have been for a longer period known; they belong to the order
of cartilaginous fishes, an order of mean organization and ferocious habits,
of which the shark and sturgeon are living specimens. "Some were furnished
with long palates, and squat, firmly- based teeth, well adapted for crushing
the strong- cased zoophytes and shells of the period, fragments of which
occur in the foecal remains; some with teeth that, line the fossil sharks
of the later formations, resemble lines of miniature pyramids, larger and
smaller alternating; some with teeth sharp, thin, and so deeply serrated,
that every individual tooth resembles a row of poniards set up against he
walls of an armory; and these last, says Agassiz, furnished with weapons
so murderous, must have been the pirates of the period Some had their fins
guarded with long spines, hooked like the beak of an eagle; some with spines

furrowed longitudinally
like columns; some were shielded by an armour of bony points, and some thickly
covered with glistening scales."*

The traces
of fuci in this system are all but sufficient to allow of a distinction
of genera. In some parts of North America, extensive though thin beds of
them have been found. A distinguished French geologist, M. Brogniart, has
strewn that all existing marine plants are classifiable with regard to the
zones of climate; some being fitted for the torrid zone, some for the temperate,
some for the frigid. And he establishes that the fuci of these early rocks
speak of a torrid climate, although they may be found in what are now temperate
regions; he also states that those of the higher rocks betoken, as we ascend,
a gradually diminishing temperature.

We thus
early begin to find proofs of the general uniformity of organic life over
the surface of the earth, at the time when each particular system of rocks
was formed. Species identical with the remains in the Wenlock limestone
occur in the corresponding class of rocks in the Eifel, and partially in
the Harz, Norway, Russia, and Brittany. The situations of the remains in
Russia are fifteen

hundred miles
from the Wenlock beds; but at the distance of between six and seven thousand
from those,-namely, in the vale of Mississippi, the same species are discovered.
Uniformity in animal life over large geographical areas argues uniformity
in the conditions of animal life; and hence arise some curious inferences
Species, in the same low class of animals, are now much more limited; for
instance, the Red Sea gives different polypiarra, zoophytes, and shell-fish,
from the Mediterranean. It is the opinion of M. Brogniart, that the uniformity
which existed in the primeval times can only be attributed to the temperature
arising from the internal heat, which had yet, as he supposes, been sufficiently
great to overpower the ordinary meteorological influences, and spread a
tropical clime all over the globe.

ERA
OF THE OLD RED SANDSTONE - FISHES ABUNDANT.

_____

WE advance to
a new chapter in this marvellous history-the era of the Old Red Sandstone
System. This term has been recently applied to a series of strata, of
enormous thickness in the whole mass, largely developed in Herefordshire,
Shropshire, Worcestershire, and South Wales; also in the counties of Fife,
Forfar, Moray, Cromarty, and Caithness; and in Russia and North America,
if not in many other parts of the world. The particular strata forming the
system are somewhat different in different countries; but there is a general
character to the extent of these being a mixture of flagstones, marry rocks,
and sandstones, usually of a laminous structure, with conglomerates. There
is also a schist shewing the presence of bitumen; a remarkable

new ingredient,
since it is a vegetable production. In the conglomerates, of great extent
and thickness, which form, in at least one district, the basis or leading
feature of the system, in closing waterworn fragments of quartz and other
rocks, we have evidence of the seas of that period having been subjected
to a violent and long-continued agitation, probably from volcanic causes.
The upper members of the series bear the appearance of having been deposited
in comparatively tranquil seas. The English specimens of this system shew
a remarkable freedom from those disturbances which result in the interjection
of trap; and they are thus defective in mineral ores. In some parts of England
the old red sandstone system has been stated as 10,000 feet in thickness.

In this
era, the forms of life which existed in the Silurian are continued: we have
the same orders of marine creatures, zoophyta, polypiaria, conchifera, crustacea;
but to these are added numerous fishes, some of which are of most extraordinary
and surprising forms. Several of the strata are crowded with remains of
fish, shewing that the areas in which those beds were deposited had swarmed
with that class of inhabitants. The in-

vestigation
of this system is recent; but already* M. Agassiz has ascertained about
twenty genera, and thrice the number of species. And it is remarkable that
the Silurian fishes are here only represented in genera; the whole of the species of that era had already passed away. Even throughout the
sub-groups of the system itself, the species are changed; and these are
phenomena observed throughout all the subsequent systems or geological eras;
apparently arguing that, during the deposition of all the rocks, a gradual
change of physical conditions was constantly going on. A varying temperature,
or even a varying depth of sea, would at present be attended with similar
changes in marine life; and by analogy we are entitled to assume that such
variations in the ancient seas might be amongst the causes of that constant
change of genera and species in the inhabitants of those seas to which the
organic contents of the rocks bear witness.

Some of
the fossils of this system,-the cephalaspis, coccosteus, pterichthys, holoptychius-are,
in form and structure, entirely different from any fishes now existing,
only the sturgeon family having any trace of affinity to them in any respect.

They seem to
form a sort of connecting link between the crustacea and true fishes.

The cephalaspis may be considered as making the smallest advance from the crustacean character;
it very much resembles in form the asaphus of lower formations, having a
longish tail-like body inserted within the cusp of a large crescent-shaped
head, somewhat like a saddler's cutting-knife. The body is covered with
strong plates of bone, enamelled, and the head was protected on the upper
side with one large plate, as with a buckler- hence the name, implying buckler-head.
A range of small fins conveys the idea of its having been as weak in motion
as it is strong in structure. The coccosteus may be said to mark
the next advance to fish creation. The outline of its body is of the form
of a short thick coffin, rounded, covered with strong bony plates, and terminating
in a long tail, which seems to have been the sole organ of motion. I is
very remarkable, that, while the tail establishes this creature among the
vertebrate and the fishes, its mouth has been opened vertically, like those
of the crustaceans, but which is contrary to the mode of vertebrate generally.
This seems a pretty strong mark of the link character of the coccosteus
between these two great departments of the animal

kingdom. The pterichthys has also strong bony plates over its body, arranged much
like those of a tortoise, and has a long tail; but its most remarkable feature,
and that which has suggested its name, is a pair of long and narrow wing-like
appendages attached to the shoulders, which the creature is supposed to
have erected for its defence when attacked by an enemy.

The holoptychius
is of a flat oval form, furnished with fins, and ending in a long tail;
the whole body covered with strong plates which overlap each other, and
the head forming only a slight rounded projection from the general figure.
The specimens in the lower beds are not above the size of a flounder; but
in the higher strata, to judge by the size of the scales or plates which
have been found, the creature attained a comparatively monstrous size.

The other
fishes of the system,-the osteolepis, glyptolepis, dipterus, &c., are,
in general outline, much like fishes still existing, but their organization
has, nevertheless, some striking peculiarities. They have been entirely
covered with bony scales or plates, enamelled externally; their spines are
tipped with bone, and, as one striking; and unvarying feature, the tail
is only finned on the lower

side. The internal
skeleton, of which no traces have been preserved, is presumed to have been
cartilaginous. They therefore unite the character of cartilaginous fishes
with a character peculiar to themselves, and in which we see pretty clear
vestiges of the pre-existent crustaceous form.

With regard
to the link character of these animals, some curious facts are mentioned.
It appears that in the imperfect condition of the vertebral column, and
the inferior situation of the mouth in the pterichthys, coccosteus, &c,
there is an analogy to the form of the dorsal cord and position of the mouth
in the embryo of perfect fishes. The one-sided form of the tail in the osteolepis
&c. finds a similar analogy in the form of the tail in the embryo of
the salmon. It is not premature to remark how broadly these facts seem to
hint at a parity of law affecting the progress of general creation, and
the progress of an individual foetus of one of the more perfect animals.

It is equally
ascertained of the types of being prevalent in the old red, as of those
of the preceding system, that there are uniform in the corresponding strata
of distant parts of the earth; for instance, Russia and North America. In
the old red sandstone, the marine plants, of

which faint
traces are observable in the Silurians, continue to appear. It would seem
as if less change took place in the vegetation than in the animals of those
early seas; and for this, as Mr. Miller has remarked, it is easy to imagine
reasons. For example, an infusion of lime into the sea would destroy animal
life, but be favourable to vegetation.

As yet there
were no land animals or plants, and for this the presumable reason is, that
no dry land as yet existed. We are not left to make this inference solely
from the absence of ]and animals and plants; in the arrangement of the primary
(stratified) rocks, we have further evidence of it. That these rocks were
formed in a generally horizontal position, we are as well assured as that
they were formed at the bottom of seas. But they are always found greatly
inclined in position, tilted up against the slopes of the granitic masses
which are beneath them in geological order, though often shooting up to
a higher point in the atmosphere. No doubt can be entertained that these
granitic masses, forming our principal mountain ranges, have been protruded
from below, or, at least, thrust much further up, since the deposition
of the primary rocks.

The protrusion
was what tilted up the primary rocks; and the inference is, of course, unavoidable,
that these mountains have risen chiefly, at least, since the primary rocks
were laid down. It is remarkable that, while the primary rocks thus incline
towards granitic nuclei or axes, the strata higher in the series rest against
these again, generally at a less inclination, or none at all, shewing that
these strata were laid down after the swelling mountain eminences had, by
their protrusion, tilted up the primary strata And that it may be said an
era of local upthrowing of the primitive and (perhaps) central matter of
our planet, is established as happening about the close of the primary strata,
and beginning of the next ensuing system. It may be called the Era of
the Oldest Mountains, or, more boldly, of the formation of the detached
portions of dry land over the hitherto watery surface of the globe-an important
part of the designs of Providence, for which the time was now apparently
come. It may be remarked, that volcanic disturbances and protrusions of
trap took place throughout the whole period of the deposition of the primary
rocks; but they were upon a comparatively limited scale, and probably all
took place under water. It was only now that the central granitic masses
of the great

mountain ranges
were thrown up, carrying up with them broken edges of the primary strata;
a process which seems to have had this difference from the other, that it
was the effect of a more tremendous force exerted at a lower depth in the
earth, and generally acting in lines pervading a considerable portion of
the earth's surface. We shall by-and-by see that the protrusion of some
of the mountain ranges was not completed, or did not stop, at that period.
There is no part of geological science more clear than that which refers
to the ages of mountains. It is as certain that the Grampian mountains of
Scotland are older than the Alps and Apennines, as it is that civilization
had visited Italy, and had enabled her to subdue the world, while Scotland
was the residence of "roving barbarians." The Pyrenees, Carpathians, and
other ranges of continental Europe, are all younger than the Grampians,
or even the insignificant Mendip Hills of southern England. Stratification
tells this tale as plainly as Livy tells the history of the Roman republic.
It tells us-to use the words of Professor Philips-that at the time when
the Grampians sent streams and detritus to straits where now the valleys

The last
three systems-called, in England, the Cumbrian, Silurian, and Devonian,
and collectively the palaeozoic rocks, from their containing the remains
of the earliest inhabitants of the globe- are of vast thickness; in England,
not much less than 30,000 feet, or nearly six miles. In other parts of the
world, as we have seen, the earliest of these systems alone is of much greater
depth- arguing an enormous profundity in the ocean in which they were formed.

SECONDARY
ROCKS. ERA OF THE CARBONIFEROUS FORMATION.

LAND
FORMED.

COMMENCEMENT
OF LAND PLANTS.

_____

WE now enter
upon a new great epoch in the history of our globe. There was now dry land.
As a consequence of this fact, there was fresh water, for rain, instead
of immediately returning to the sea, as formerly, was now gathered in channels
of the earth, and became springs, rivers, and lakes. There was now a theatre
for the existence of land plants and animals, and it remains to be inquired
if these accordingly were produced.

The Secondary
Rocks, in which our further researches are to be prosecuted, consist of
a great and varied series, resting, generally unconformably, against flanks
of the upturned primary rocks,

sometimes themselves
considerably inclined, at others, forming extensive basin-like beds, nearly
horizontal; in many places, much broken up and shifted by disturbances from
below. They have all been formed out of the materials of the older rocks,
by virtue of the wearing power of air and water, which is still every day
carrying down vast quantities of the elevated matter of the globe into the
sea. But the separate strata are each much more distinct in the matter of
its composition than might be expected. Some are siliceous or arenaceous
(sandstones), composed mainly of fine grains from the quartz rocks-the most
abundant of the primary strata. Others are argillaceous clays, shales, &c.,
chiefly derived, probably, from the slate beds of the primary series. Others
are calcareous, derived from the early limestone. As a general feature,
they are softer and less crystalline than the primary rocks, as if they
had endured less of both heat and pressure than the senior formation. There
are beds (coal) formed solely of vegetable matter, and some others
in which the main ingredient is particles of iron, (the iron black band.)
The secondary rocks are quite as communicative with regard to their portion
of the earth's history as the primitive were.

The first,
or lowest, group of the secondary rocks is called the Carboniferous Formation,
from the remarkable feature of its numerous interspersed beds of coal. It
commences with the beds of the mountain limestone, which, in some
situations, as in Derbyshire and Ireland, are of great thickness, being
alternated with chert (a siliceous sandstone), sandstones, shales, and beds
of coal, generally of the harder and less bituminous kind (anthracite),
the whole being covered in some places by the millstone grit, a siliceous
conglomerate composed of the detritus of the primary rocks. The mountain
limestone, attaining in England to a depth of eight hundred yards, greatly
exceeds in volume any of the primary limestone beds, and shews an enormous
addition of power to the causes formerly suggested as having produced this
substance. In fact, remains of corals, crinoidea, and shells, are so abundant
in it, as to compose three-fourths of the mass in some parts. Above the
mountain limestone commence the more conspicuous coal beds, alternating
with sandstones, shales, beds of limestone, and ironstone. Coal is altogether
composed of the matter of a terrestrial vegetation, transmuted by pressure.
Some fresh-water shells have been

found in it,
but few of marine origin, and no remains of those zoophytes and crinoidea
so abundant in the mountain limestone and other rocks. Coal beds exist in
Europe, Asia, and America, and have hitherto been esteemed as the most valuable
of mineral productions, from the important services which the substance
renders in manufactures and in domestic economy. It is to be remarked, that
there are some local variations in the arrangement of coal beds. In France,
they rest immediately on the granite and other primary rocks, the intermediate
strata not having been found at those places. In America, the kind called
anthracite occurs among the slate beds, and this species also abounds more
in the mountain limestone than with us. These last circumstances only shew
that different parts of the earth's surface did not all witness the same
events of a certain fixed series exactly at the same time. There had been
an exhibition of dry land about the site of America, a little earlier than
in Europe.

Some features
of the condition of the earth during the deposition of the-carboniferous
group, are made out with a clearness which must satisfy most minds. First
we are told of a time when

carbonate of
lime was formed in vast abundance at the bottoms of profound seas, accompanied
by an unusually large population of corals and encrinites; while in some
parts of the earth there were patches of dry land, covered with a luxuriant
vegetation. Next we have a comparatively brief period of volcanic disturbance,
(when the conglomerate was formed.) Then the causes favourable to the so
abundant production of limestone, and the large population of marine acrita,
decline, and we find the masses of dry land increase in number and extent,
and begin to bear an amount of forest vegetation, far exceeding that of
the most sheltered tropical spots of the present surface. The climate, even
in the latitude of Baffin's Bay, was torrid, and perhaps the atmosphere
contained a larger charge of carbonic acid gas (the material of vegetation)
than it now does. The forests or thickets of the period, included no species
of plants now known upon earth. They mainly consisted of gigantic shrubs,
which are either not represented by any existing types, or are akin to kinds
which are now only found in small and lowly forms. That these forests grew
upon a Polynesia, or multitude of small islands, is considered probable,
from similar vegetation being now found in such situations

within the tropics.
With regard to the circumstances under which the masses of vegetable matter
were transformed into successive coal strata, geologists are divided. From
examples seen at the present day, at the mouths of such rivers as the Mississippi,
which traverse extensive sylvan regions, and from other circumstances to
be adverted to, it is held likely by ome that the vegetable matter, the
rubbish of decayed forests, was carried by rivers into estuaries, and there
accumulated in vast natural rafts, until it sunk to the bottom, where an
overlayer of sand or mud would prepare it for becoming a stratum of coal.
Others conceive that the vegetation first went into the condition of a peat
moss, that a sink in the level then exposed it to be overrun by the sea,
and covered with a layer of sand or mud; that a subsequent uprise made the
mud dry land, and fitted it to bear a new forest, which afterwards, like
its predecessor, became a bed of peat; that, in short, by repetitions of
this process, the alternate layers of coal, sandstone, and shale, constituting
the carboniferous group, were formed. It is favourable to this last view
that marine fossils are scarcely found in the body of the coal itself, though
abundant in the shale layers above and below it; also

that in several
places erect stems of trees are found with their roots still fixed in the
shale beds, and crossing the sandstone beds at almost right angles, shewing
that these, at least, had not been drifted from their original situations.
On the other hand, it is not easy to admit such repeated risings and sinkings
of surface as would be required, on this hypothesis, to form a series of
coal strata. Perhaps we may most safely rest at present with the supposition
that coal has been formed under both classes of circumstances, though in
the latter only as an exception to the former.

Upwards
of three hundred species of plants have been ascertained to exist in the
coal formation; but it is not necessary to suppose that the whole contained
in that system are now, or ever will be distinguished. Experiments shew
that some great classes of plants become decomposed in water in a much less
space of time than others, and it is remarkable that those which decompose
soonest, are of the classes found most rare, or not at all, in the coal
strata. It is consequently to be inferred that there may have been grasses
and mosses at this era, and many species of trees, the remains of which
had lost all trace of organic form before their substance sunk into the
mass of which coal was formed.

In speaking,
therefore, of the vegetation of this period, we must bear in mind that it
may have comprehended forms of which we have no memorial.

Supposing,
nevertheless, that, in the main, the ascertained vegetation of the coal
system is that which grew at the time of its formation, it is interesting
to find that the terrestrial botany of our globe begins with classes of
comparatively simple forms and structure. In the ranks of the vegetable
kingdom, the lowest place is taken by plants of cellular tissue, and which
have no flowers, (cryptogamia,) as lichens, mosses, fungi, ferns,
sea-weeds. Above these stand plants of vascular tissue, and bearing flowers,
in which again there are two great subdivisions; first, plants having one
seedlobe, (monocotyledons,) and in which the new matter is added
within, (endogenous,) of which the cane and palm are examples; second,
plants having two seed-lobes, (dicotyledons,) and in which the new
matter is added on the outside under the bark, (exoyenous,) of which
the pine, elm, oak, and most of the British forest-trees are examples; these
subdivisions also ranking in the order in which they are herestated. Now
it is clear that a predominance of these forms in succession marked

the successive
epochs developed by fossil geology; the simple abounding first, and the
complex afterwards.

Two-thirds
of the plants of the carboniferous era are of the cellular or cryptogamic
kind, a proportion which would probably be much increased if we knew the
whole Flora of that era The ascertained dicotyledons, or higher-class plants,
are comparatively few in this formation; but it will be found that they
constantly increased as the globe grew older.

The master-form
or type of the era was the fern, or breckan, of which about one hundred
and thirty species have already been ascertained as entering into the composition
of coal.* The fern is a plant which thrives best in warm, shaded, and moist
situations. In tropical countries, where these conditions abound, there
are many more species than in temperate climes, and some of these are arborescent,
or of a tree-like size and luxuriance. The ferns of the coal strata have
been of this magnitude, and that without regard to

*
The principal families are named sphenopteris, neuropteris, and pecopteris.

A specimen from Bengal, in the staircase of the British Museum, is forty-five
feet high.

the parts of
the earth where they are found. In the coal of Baffin's Bay, of Newcastle,
and of the torrid zone alike, are the fossil ferns arborescent, shewing
clearly that, in that era, the present tropical temperature, or one even
higher, existed in very high latitudes.

In the swamps
and ditches of England there grows a plant called the horse-tait (equisetum),
having a succulent, erect, jointed stem, with slender leaves, and a scaly
catkin at the top. A second large section of the plants of the carboniferous
era were of this kind (equisetaceae), but, like the fern, reaching
the magnitudes of trees. While existing equiseta rarely exceed three feet
in height, and the stems are generally under half an inch in diameter, their
kindred, entombed in the coal beds, seem to have been generally fourteen
or fifteen feet high, with stems from six inches to a foot in thickness.
Arborescent plants of this family, line the arborescent ferns, now grow
only in tropical countries, and their being found in the coal beds in all
latitudes is consequently held as an additional proof, that at this era
a warm climate was extended much farther to the north than at present. It
is to be remarked that plants of this kind (forming two genera, the most
abundant of which is the

calamites)
are only represented on the present surface by plants of the same family:
the species which flourished at this era gradually lessen in number
as we advance upwards in the series of rocks, and disappear before we arrive
at the tertiary formation.

The club-moss
family (lycopodiacae) are other plants of the present surface, usually
seen in a lowly and creeping form in temperate latitudes, but presenting
species which rise to a greater magnitude within the tropics. Many specimens
of this family are found in the coal beds; it is thought they have contributed
more to the substance of the coal than any other family. But, like the ferns
and equisetaceae, they rise to a prodigious magnitude. The lepidodendra
(so the fossil genus is called) have probably been from sixty-five to eighty
feet in height, having at their base a diameter of about three feet, while
their leaves measured twenty inches in length. In the forests of the coal
era, the lepidodendra would enjoy the rank of firs in our forests, affording
shade to the only less stately ferns and calamites. The internal structure
of the stem, and the character of the seed-vessels, shew them to have been
a link be-

tween single-lobed
and double-lobed plants, a fact worthy of note, as it favours the idea that,
in vegetable, as well as animal creation, a progress has been observed,
in conformity with advancing conditions. It is also curious to find a missing
link of so much importance in a genus of plants which has long ceased to
have a living place upon earth.

The other
leading plants of the coal era are without representatives on the present
surface, and their characters are in general less clearly ascertained. Amongst
the most remarkable are-the sigillaria, of which large stems are
very abundant, shewing that the interior has been soft, and the exterior
fluted with separate leaves inserted in vertical rows along the flutings-and
the stigmaria, plants apparently calculated to flourish in marshes
or pools, having a short, thick, fleshy stem, with a dome-shaped top, from
which sprung branches of from twenty to thirty feet long. Amongst monocotyledons
were some palms, (flabellaria and nggerathia,) besides a
few not distinctly assignable to any class.

The dicotyledons
of the coal are comparatively few, though on the present surface they are
the most numerous sub-class. Besides some of doubt-

ful affinity,
(annularia, asterophyllites, &c.,) there were a few of
the pine family, which seem to have been the highest class of trees of this
era, and are only as yet found in isolated cases, and in sandstone beds.
The first discovered lay in the Craigleith quarry, near Edinburgh, and consisted
of a stem about two feet thick, and forty-seven feet in length. Others have
since been found, both in the same situation, and at Newcastle. Leaves and
fruit being wanting, an ingenious mode of detecting the nature of these
trees was hit upon by Mr. Witham of Lartington. Taking thin polished cross
slices of the stem, and subjecting them to the microscope, he detected the
structure of the wood to be that of a cone-bearing tree, by the presence
of certain "reticulations" which distinguish that family, in addition to
the usual radiating and concentric lines. That particular tree was concluded
to be an araucaria, a species now found in Norfolk Island, in the South
Sea, and in a few other remote situations. The coniferae of this era form
the dawn of dicotyledenous trees, of which they may be said to be the simplest
type, and to which, it has already been noticed, the lepidodendra are a
link from the monocotyledons. The concentric rings of the Craigleith and
other coniferae, of this

era have been
mentioned. It is interesting to find in these a record of the changing seasons
of those early ages, when as yet there were no human beings to observe time
or tide. They are clearly traced; but it is observed that they are more
slightly marked than is the case with their family at the present day, as
if the changes of temperature had been within a narrower range.

Such was
the vegetation of the carbonigenous era, composed of forms at the bottom
of the botanical scale, flowerless, fruitless, but luxuriant and abundant
beyond what the most favoured spots on earth can now shew. The rigidity
of the leaves of its, plants, and the absence of fleshy fruits and farinaceous
seeds, unfitted it to afford nutriment to animals; and, monotonous in its
forms, and destitute of brilliant colouring, its sward probably unenlivened
by any of the smaller flowering herbs, its shades uncheered by the hum of
insects, or the music of birds, it must have been but a sombre scene to
a human visitant. But neither man nor any other animals were then in existence
to look for such uses or such beauties in this vegetation. It was serving
other and equally important ends, clearing (probably) the atmosphere of
matter noxious to animal life, and storing up mineral masses

which were in
long subsequent ages to prove of the greatest service to the human race,
even to the extent of favouring the progress of its civilization.

The animal
remains of this era are not numerous, in comparison with those which go
before, or those which come after. The mountain limestone, indeed, deposited
at the commencement of it, abounds unusually in polypiaria and crinoiclea;
but when we ascend to the coal-beds themselves, the case is altered, and
these marine remains altogether disappear. We have then only a limited variety
of conchifers and shell mollusks, with fragments of a few species of fishes,
and these are rarely or never found in the coal seams, but in the shales
alternating with them. Some of the fishes are of a sauroid character, that
is, partake of the nature of the lizard, a genus of the reptilia, a land
class of animals, so that we may be said here to have the first approach
to a kind of animals calculated to breathe the atmosphere. Such is the Megalichthys
Hibbertii, found by Dr. Hibbert Ware, in a limestone bed of fresh-water
origin, underneath the coal at Burdiehouse, near Edinburgh. Others of the
same kind have been found in the coal measures in Yorkshire, and in the
low coal

shales at Manchester.
This is no more than might be expected, as collections of fresh water now
existed, and it is presumable that they would be peopled. The chief other
fishes of the coal era are named palaeothrissum, palaeoniscus, diperdus.

Coal strata
are nearly confined to the group termed the carboniferous formation. Thin
beds are not unknown afterwards, but they occur only as a rare exception.
It is therefore thought that the most important of the conditions which
allowed of so abundant a terrestrial vegetation, had ceased about the time
when this formation was closed. The high temperature was not one of the
conditions which terminated, for there are evidences of it afterwards; but
probably the superabundance of carbonic acid gas supposed to have existed
during this era was expended before its close. There can be little doubt
that the infusion of a large dose of this gas into the atmosphere at the
present day would be attended by precisely the same circumstances as in
the time of the carboniferous formation. Land animal life would not have
a place on eart; vegetation would be enormous; and coal strata would be
formed from the rest accumulations of woody matter, which would gather in
every sea, near the mouths of great rivers On the exhaus-

tion of the
superabundance of carbonic acid gas, the coal formation would cease, and
the earth might again become a suitable theatre of being for land animals.

The termination
of the carboniferous formation is marked by symptoms of volcanic violence,
which some geologists have considered to denote the close of one system
of things and the beginning of another. Coal beds generally lie in basins,
as if following the curve of the bottom of seas. But there is no such basin
which is not broken up into pieces, some of which have been tossed up on
edge, others allowed to sink, causing the ends of strata to be in some instances
many yards, and in a few several hundred feet, removed from the corresponding
ends of neighbouring fragments. These are held to be results of volcanic
movements below, the operation of which is further seen in numerous upbursts
and intrusions of volcanic rock (trap). That these disturbances took place
about the close of the formation, and not later, is shewn in the fact of
the next higher group of strata being comparatively undisturbed. Other symptoms
of this time of violence are seen in the beds of conglomerate which occur
amongst the first strata above the coal. These, as usual, consist of frag-

ments of the
elder rocks, more or less worn from being tumbled about in agitated water,
and laid down in a mud paste, afterwards hardened. Volcanic disturbances
break up the rocks; the pieces are worn in seas; and a deposit of conglomerate
is the consequence. Of porphyry, there are some such pieces in the conglomerate
of Devonshire, three or four tons in weight. It is to be admitted for strict
truth that, in some parts of Europe, the carboniferous formation is followed
by superior deposits, without the appearance of such disturbances between
their respective periods; but apparently this case belongs to the class
of exceptions already noticed.* That disturbance was general, is supported
by the further and important fact of the destruction of many forms of organic
being previously flourishing, particularly of the vegetable kingdom.

* "
Some of the most considerable dislocations of the border of the coal fields
of Coalbrookdale and Dudley happened after the deposition of a part of the
new red sandstone; but it is certain that those of Somersetshire and Gloucestershire
"-Philips.

ERA
OF THE NEW RED SANDSTONE.

TERRESTRIAL
ZOOLOGY COMMENCES

WITH
REPTILES.

FIRST
TRACES OF BIRDS.

____

THE next volume
of the rock series refers to an era distinguished by an event of no less
importance than the commencement of land animals. The New Red Sandstone
System is subdivided into groups, some of which are wanting in some
places; they are pretty fully developed in the north of England, in the
following ascending order:— 1. Lower red sandstone; 2. Magnesian limestone;
3. Red and white sandstones and conglomerate; 4. Variegated marls. Between
the third and fourth there is, in Germany, another group, called the Muschelkalk,
a word expressing a limestone full of shells.

The first
group, containing the conglomerates already adverted to, seems to have been
produced during the time of disturbance which occurred so generally after
the carbonigenous era This new era is distinguished by a paucity of organic
remains, as might partly be expected from the appearances of disturbance,
and the red tint of the rocks, the latter being communicated by a solution
of oxide of iron, a substance unfavourable to animal life.

The second
group is a limestone with an infusion of magnesia It is developed less generally
than some others, but occurs conspicuously in England and Germany. Its place,
above the red sandstone, shews the recurrence of circumstances favourable
to animal life, and we accordingly find in it not only zoophytes, conchifera,
and a few tribes of fish, but some faint traces of land plants, and a new
and startling appearance-a reptile of saurian (lizard) character, analogous
to the now existing family called monitors. Remains of this creature are
found in cupriferous (copper-bearing) slate connected with the mountain
limestone, at Mansfield and Glucksbrunn, in Germany, which may be taken
as evidence that dry land existed in that age near those places. The magnesia
lime-

stone is also
remarkable as the last rock in which appears the leptaena, or producta,
a conchifer of numerous species which makes a conspicuous appearance in
all previous seas. It is likewise to be observed, that the fishes of this
age, to the genera of which the names palmoniscus, catopterus, platysomus,
&c., have been applied, vanish, and henceforth appear no more.

The third
group, chiefly sandstones, variously coloured according to the amount and
nature of the metallic oxide infused into them, shews a recurrence of agitation,
and a consequent diminution of the amount of animal life. In the upper part,
however, of this group, there are abundant symptoms of a revival of proper
conditions for such life. There are marl beds, the origin of which substance
in decomposed shells is obvious; and in Germany, though not in England,
here occurs the muschelkalk, containing numerous organic remains, (generally
different from those of the magnesian limestone,) and noted for the specimens
of land animals, which it is the first to present in any considerable abundance
to our notice.

These animals
are of the vertebrate sub-kingdom, but of its lowest class next after fishes,-
namely, reptiles,-a portion of the terrestrial tribes

whose imperfect
respiratory system perhaps fitted them for enduring an atmosphere not yet
quite suitable for birds or mammifers.* The specimens found in the muschelkalk
are allied to the crocodile and lizard tribes of the present day, but in
the latter instance are upon a scale of magnitude as much superior to present
forms as the lepidodendron of the coal era was superior to the dwarf club-mosses
of our time. These saurians also combine some peculiarities of structure
of a most extraordinary character.

The animal
to which the name ichthyosaurus has been given, was as long as a
young whale, and it was fitted for living in the water, though breathing
the atmosphere. It had te vertebral column and general bodily form of a
fish, but to that were added the head and breast-bone of a lizard, and the
paddles of the whale tribes. The beak, moreover, was that of a porpoise,
and the teeth were those of a crocodile. It must have been a most destructive
creature to the fish of those early seas.

*The
immediate effects of the slow respiration of the reptilia are, a low
temperature in their bodies, and a slow consumption of food. Requiring
little oxygen, they could have existed in an atmosphere containing a
less proportion of that gas to carbonic acid gas than what now obtains.

The plesiosaurus was of similar bulk, with a turtle-like body and paddles, shewing that the
sea was its element, but with a long serpent-like neck, terminating in a
saurian head, calculated to reach prey at a considerable distance. These
two animals, of which many varieties have been discovered, constituting
distinct species, are supposed to have lived in the shallow borders of the
seas of this and subsequent formations, devouring immense quantities of
the finny tribes. It was at first thought that no creatures approaching
them in character now inhabit the earth; but latterly Mr. Darwin has discovered,
in the reptile-peopled Galapagos Islands, in the South Sea, a marine saurian
from three to four feet long.

The megalosaurus was an enormous lizard-a land creature, also carnivorous. The pterodaclyle was another lizard, but furnished with wings to pursue its prey in the air,
and varying in size between a cormorant and a snipe. Crocodiles abounded,
and some of these were herbivorous. Such was the iguanodon, a creature of
the character of the iguana of the Ganges, but reaching a hundred feet in
length, or twenty times that of its modern representative.

them reaching
a great size; and Professor Owen has found in Warwickshire some remains
of an animal of the batrachian order,* to which, from the peculiar form
of the teeth, he has given the name of labyrinthidon. Thus, three of Cuvier's
four orders of reptilia (sauria, chelonia, and batrachia) are represented
in this formation, the serpent order (ophidia) being alone wanting.

The variegated
marl beds which constitute the uppermost group of the formation, present
two additional genera of huge saurians,-the phytosaurus and mastodonsaurus.

It is in
the upper beds of the red sandstone that beds of salt first occur. These
are sometimes of such thickness, that the mine from which the material has
been excavated looks like a lofty church. We see in the present world no
circumstances calculated to produce the formation of a bed of rock salt;
yet it is not difficult to understand how such strata were formed in an
age marked by ultra-tropical heat -and frequent volcanic disturbances. An
estuary, cut off by an upthrow of trap, or a change of level, and left to
dry up under the heat of the sun, would quickly become

the bed of a
dense layer of rock salt. A second shift of level, or some other volcanic
disturbance, connecting it again with the sea, would expose this stratum
to being covered over with a ayer of sand or mud, destined in time to form
the next stratum of rock above it.

The plants
of this era are few and unobtrusive. Equiseta, calamites, ferns, Voltzia,
and a few of the other families found so abundantly in the preceding formation,
here present themselves, but in diminished size and quantity.

This seems
to be the proper place to advert to certain memorials of a peculiar and
unexpected character respecting these early ages in the sandstones. So low
as the bottom of the carboniferous system, slabs are found marked over a
great extent of surface with that peculiar corrugation or wrinkling which
the receding tide leaves upon a sandy beach when the sea is but slightly
agitated; and not only are these ripple-marks, as they are called, found
on the surfaces, but casts of them are found on the under sides of slabs
lying above. The phenomena suggests the time when the sand ultimately formed
into these stone slabs, was part of the beach of a sea of the carbonigenous
era; when, left wavy by one tide, it was covered over with a

thin layer of
fresh sand by the next, and so on, precisely as such circumstances might
be expected to take place at the present day. Sandstone surfaces, ripple-marked,
are found throughout the subsequent formations: in those of the new red,
at more than one place in England, they further bear impressions of rain-drops
which have fallen upon them-the rain, of course, of the inconceivably remote
age in which the sandstones were formed. In the Greensill sandstone, near
Shrewsbury, it has even been possible to tell from what direction the shower
came which impressed the sandy surface, the rims of the marks being somewhat
raised on one side, exactly as might be expected from a slanting shower
falling at this day upon one of our beaches. These facts have the same sort
of interest as the season rings of the Craigleith conifers, as speaking
of a parity between some of the familiar processes of nature in those early
ages and our own.

In the new
red sandstone, impressions still more important in the inferences to which
they tend, have been,-namely, the footmarks of various animals. In a quarry
of this formation, at Corncockle Muir, in Dumfriesshire, where the slabs
incline at an angle of thirty-eight degrees,

the vestiges
of an animal supposed to have been a tortoise are distinctly traced up and
down the slope, as if the creature had had occasion to pass backwards and
forwards in that direction only, possibly in its daily visits to the sea.
Some slabs similarly impressed, in the Stourton quarries in Cheshire, are
further marked with a shower of rain which we know must have fallen afterwards,
for its little hollows are impressed in the footmarks also, though more
slightly than on the rest of the surface, the comparative hardness of a
trodden place having apparently prevented so deep an impression being made.
At Hessberg, in Saxony-, the vestiges of four distinct animals have been
traced, one of them a web-footed animal of small size, considered as a congener
of the crocodile; another, whose footsteps having a resemblance to an impression
of a swelled human hand, has caused it to be named the cheirotherium. The
footsteps of the cheirotherium have been found also in the Stourton
quarries above mentioned. Professor Owen, who stands at the head of comparative
anatomy in the present day, has exressed his belief that this last animal
was the same batrachian of which he has found fragments in the new red sandstone
of Warwickshire. At Runcorn, near

Manchester,
and elsewhere, have been discovered the tracks of an animal which Mr. Owen
calls the rynchosaurus, uniting with the body of a reptile the beak and
feet of a bird, and which clearly had been a link between these two
classes,

If geologists
shall ultimately give their approbation to the inferences made from a recent
discovery in America, we shall have the addition of perfect birds, though
probably of a low type, to the animal forms of this era. It is stated to
be in quarries of this rock, in the valley of Connecticut, that footprints
have been found, apparently produced by birds of the order grallae, or waders.
"The footsteps appear in regular succession on the continuous track of
an animal, in the act of walking or running, with the right and left foot
always in their relative places. The distance of the intervals between each
footstep on the same track is occasionally varied, but to no greater amount
than may be explained by the bird having altered its pace. Many tracks of
different individuals and different species are often found crossing each
other, and crowded, like impressions of feet upon the shores of a muddy
"*

*
Dr. Buckland, quoting an article by Professor Hitchcock, in the American
Journal of Science and Arts, 1836.

Some of these
prints indicate small animals, but others denote birds of what would now
be an unusually large size. One animal, having a foot fifteen inches in
length, (one-half more than that of the ostrich,) and a stride of from four
to six feet, has been appropriately entitled, ornithichnites giganteus.

ERA
OF THE OOLITE.

COMMENCEMENT
OF MAMMALIA.

______

THE chronicles
of this period consist of a series of beds, mostly calcareous, taking their
general name (Oolite System) from a conspicuous member of them-the
oolite-a limestone composed of an aggregation of small round grains or spherules,
and so called from its fancied resemblance to a cluster of eggs, or the
roe of a fish. This texture of stone is novel and striking. It is supposed
to be of chemical origin, each spherule being an aggregation of particles
round a central nucleus. The oolite system is largely developed in England,
France, Westphalia, and Northern Italy; it appears in Northern India and
Africa, and patches of it exist in Scotland, and in the vale of the Mississippi.
It may of course be yet discovered in many other parts of the world.

The series,
as shewn in the neighbourhood of Bath, is (beginning with the lowest) as
follows:— 1. Lias, a set of strata variously composed of limestone, clay,
marl, and shale, clay being predominant; 2. Lower oolitic formation, including,
besides the great oolite bed of central England, fullers' earth beds, forest
marble, and cornbrash; 3. Middle oolitic formation, composed of two subgroups,
the Oxford clay and coral rag, the latter being a mere layer of the works
of the coral polype; 4. Upper oolitic formation, including wht are called
Rimmeridge clay and Portland oolite. In Yorkshire there is an additional
group above the lias, and in Sutherlandshire there is another group above
that again. In the wealds (moorlands) of Kent and Sussex, there is, in like
manner, above the fourth of the Bath series, another additional group, to
which the name of the Wealden has been given, from its situation,
and which, composed of sandstones and clays, is subdivided into Purbeck
beds, Hastings sand, and Weald clay.

There are
no particular appearances of disturbance between the close of the new red
sandstone and the beginning of the oolite system, as far as

has been observed
in England. Yet there is a great change in the materials of the rocks of
the two formations, shewing that while the bottoms of the seas of the one
period had been chiefly arenaceous, those of the other were chiefly clayey
and limy. And there is an equal difference between the two periods in respect
of both botany and zoology. While the new red sandstone shews comparatively
scanty traces of organic creation, those in the oolite are extremely abundant,
particularly in the department of animals, and more particularly still of
sea mollusca, which, it has been observed, are always the more conspicuous
in proportion to the predominance of calcareous rocks. It is also remarkable
that the animals of the oolitic system are entirely different in species
from those of the preceding age, and that these species cease before the
next. In this system we likewise find that uniformity over great space which
has been remarked of the Faunas of earlier formations. "In the equivalent
deposits in the Himalaya Mountains, at Fernando Po, in the region north
of the Cape of Good Hope, and in the Run of Cutch, and other parts of Hindostan,

glish naturalists
who have seen them can determine, are undistinguishable from certain oolite
and lias fossils of Europe."*

The dry
land of this age presented cycadeae, "a beautiful class of plants between
the palms and conifers, having a tall, straight trunk, terminating in a
magnificent crown of foliage." There were tree ferns, but in smaller proportion
than in former ages; also equisetaceae, lilia, and conifers. The vegetation
was generally analogous to that of the Cape of Good Hope and Australia,
which seems to argue a climate (we must remember, a universal climate) between
the tropical and temperate. It was, however, sufficiently luxuriant in some
instances to produce thin seams of coal, for such are found in the oolite
formation of both Yorkshire and Sutherland. The sea, as for ages before,
contained algae, of which, however, only a few species have been preserved
to our day. The lower classes of the inhabitants of the ocean were unprecedentedly
abundant. The polypiaria were in such abundance as to form whole strata
of themselves. The crinoidea and echinites were also extremely numerous.
Shell mollusks, in hundreds of new species, oc-

cupied the bottoms
of the seas of those ages, while of the swimming shell-fish, ammonites and
belemnites, there were also many scores of varieties. The belemnite here
calls for some particular notice. It commences in the oolite, and terminates
in the next formation. It is an elongated, conical shell, terminating in
a point, and having, at the larger end, a cavity for the residence of the
animal, with a series of air-chambers below. The animal, placed in the upper
cavity, could raise or depress itself in the water at pleasure by a pneumatic
operation upon the central air tube pervading its shell. Its tentacula,
sent abroad over the summit of the shell, searched the sea for prey. The
creature had an ink-bag, with which it could muddle the water around it,
to protect itself from more powerful animals, and, strange to say, this
has been found so well preserved that an artist has used it in one instance
as a paint, wherewith to delineate the belemnite itself.

The crustacea
discovered in this formation are less numerous. There are many fishes, some
of which (acrodus, psammodus, &c.,) are presumed from remains
of their palatal bones, to have been of the gigantic cartilaginous class,
now represented by such as the cestraceon. It has been considered

by Professor
Owen as worthy of notice, that, the cestraceon being an inhabitant of the
Australian seas, we have, in both the botany and ichthyology of this period,
an analogy to that continent. The pycnodontes, (thick-toothed,) and lepidoides,
(having thick scales,) are other families described by M. Agassiz as extensively
prevalent. In the shallow waters of the oolitic formation, the ichthyosaurus,
plesiosaurus, and other huge saurian carnivora of the preceding age, plied,
in increased numbers, their destructive vocation.* To them were added new
genera, the cetiosaurus, mososaurus, and some others, all of similar character
and habits.

Land reptiles
abounded, including species of the pterodactyle of the preceding age-tortoises,
trionyces, crocodilians-and the pliosaurus, a creature which appears to
have formed a link between the plesiosaurus and the crocodile. We know of
at least six species of the flying saurian, the pterodactyle, in this formation.

*
In some instances, these fossils are found with the contents of the
stomach faithfully preserved, and even with pieces of the external skin.
The pellets ejected by them (coprolites) are found in vast numbers,
each generally enclosed in a nodule of ironstone, and sometimes shewing
remains of the fishes which had formed their food.

Now, for
the first time, we find remains of insects, an order of animals not well
calculated for fossil preservation, and which are therefore amongst the
rarest of the animal tribes found in rocks, though they are the most numerous
of all living families. A single libellula (dragon-fly) was found in the
Stonesfield slate, a member of the lower oolitie group quarried near Oxford;
and this was for several years the only specimen known to exist so early;
but now many species have been found in a corresponding rock at Solenhofen,
in Germany. It is remarkable that the remains of insects are found most
plentifully near the remains of pterodactyles, to which undoubtedly they
served as prey.

The first
glimpse of the highest class of the vertebrate sub-kingdom-mammalia-is
obtained from the Stonesfield slate, where there has been found the jaw-bone
of a quadruped evidently insectirorous, and inferred, from peculiarities
i the structure of that small fragment, to have belonged to the marsupial
family, (pouched animals). It may be observed, although no specimens of
so high a class of animals as mammalia are found earlier, such may nevertheless
have existed: the defect may be in our not having found them; but,

other things
considered, the probability is that heretofore there were no mammifers.
It is an interesting circumstance that the first mammifers found should
have belonged to the marsupialia, when the place of that order in the scale
of creation is considered. In the imperfect structure of their brain, deficient
in the organs connecting the two hemispheres-and in the mode of gestation,
which is only in small part uterine-this family is clearly a link between
the oviparous vertebrate (birds, reptiles, and fishes) and the higher mammifers.
This is further established by their possessing a faint development of two
canals passing from near the anus to the external surface of the viscera,
which are fully possessed in reptiles and fishes, for the purpose of supplying
aerated water to the blood circulating in particular vessels, but which
are unneeded by mammifers. Such rudiments of organs in certain species which
do not require them in any degree, are common in both the animal and vegetable
kingdoms, but are always most conspicuous in families approaching in character
to those classes to which the full organs are proper. This subject will
be more particularly adverted to in the sequel.

sents some phenomena
of an unusual and interesting character, which demand special notice. Immediately
above the upper oolitic group in Buckinghamshire, in the vicinity of Weymouth,
and other situations, there is a thin stratum, usually called by workmen
the dirt-bed, which appears, from incontestable evidence, to have
been a soil, formed, like soils of the present day, in the course of time,
upon a surface which had previously been the bottom of the sea The dirt-bed
contains exuviae of tropical trees, accumulated through time, as the forest
shed its honours on the spot where it grew, and became itself decayed. Near
Weymouth there is a piece of this stratum, in which stumps of trees remain
rooted, mostly erect or slightly inclined, and from one to three feet high;
while trunks of the same forest, also silicified, lie imbedded on the surface
of the soil in which they grew.

Above this
bed lie those which have been called the Wealden, from their full development
in the Weald of Sussex; and these as incontestably argue that the dry land
forming the dirt-bed had next afterwards become the area of brackish estuaries,
or lanes partially connected with the sea; for the Wealden strata contain
exuvi of fresh-water

tribes, besides
those of the great saurians and chelonia. The area of this estuary comprehends
the whole south-east province of England. A geologist thus confidently narrates
the subsequent events: "Much calcareous matter was first deposited [in this
estuary], and in it were entombed myriads of shells, apparently analogous
to those of the vivipara. Then came a thick envelope of sand, sometimes
interstratified with mud; and, finally, muddy matter prevailed. The solid
surface beneath the waters would appear to have suffered a long continued
and gradual depression, which was as gradually filled, or nearly so, with
transported matter; in the end, however, after a depression of several hundred
feet, the sea again entered upon the area, not suddenly or violently-for
the Wealden rocks pass gradually into the superincumbent cretaceous series-but
so quietly, that the mud containing the remains of terrestrial and fresh-water
creatures was tranquilly covered up by sands replete with marine exuviee."*
A subsequent depression of the same area, to the depth of at least three
hundred fathoms, is believed to have taken place, to admit of the deposition
of the cretaceous beds lying above.

From the
scattered way in which remains of the larger terrestrial animals occur in
the Wealden, and the intermixture of pebbles of the special appearance of
those worn in rivers, it is also inferred that the estuary which once covered
the southeast part of England was the mouth of a river of that far-descending
class of which the Mississippi and Amazon are examples. What part of the
earth's surface presented the dry land through which that and other similar
rivers flowed, no one can tell for certain. It has been surmised, that the
particular one here spoken of may have flowed from a point not nearer than
the site of the present Newfoundland. Professor Philips has suggested, from
the analogy of the mineral composition, that anciently elevated coal strata
may have composed the dry land from which the sandy matters of these strata
were washed. Such a deposit as the Wealden almost necessarily implies a
local, not a general condition; yet it has been thought that similar strata
and remains exist in the Pays de Bray, near Beauvais. This leads to the
supposition that there may have been, in that age, a series of river-receiving
estuaries along the border of some such great ocean as the Atlantic, of
which that of modern Sussex is only an example.

ERA
OF THE CRETACEOUS FORMATION.

____

THE record of
this period consists of a series of strata, in which chalk beds make a conspicuous
appearance, and which is therefore called the cretaceous system or formation.
In England, a long stripe, extending from Yorkshire to Kent, presents the
cretaceous beds upon the surface, generally lying conformably upon the oolite,
and in many instances rising into bold escarpments towards the west. The
celebrated cliffs of Dover are of this formation. It extends into northern
France, and thence north-westward into Germany, whence it is traced into
Scandinavia and Russia. The same system exists in North America, and probably
in other parts of the earth not yet geologically investigated. Being a marine
deposit, it establishes that seas existed at the time of its formation on

the tracts occupied
by it, while some of its organic remains prove that, in the neighbourhood
of those seas, there were tracts of dry land.

The cretaceous
formation in England presents beds chiefly sandy in the lowest part, chiefly
clayey in the middle, and chiefly of chalk in the upper part, the chalk
beds being never absent, which some of the lower are in several places.
In the vale of the Mississippi, again, the true chalk is wholly, or all
but wholly absent. In the south of England, the lowerbeds are, (reckoning
from the lowest upwards), 1. Shankland or greensand, "a triple
alternation of sands and sandstones with clay;" 2. Galt, "a stiff
blue or black clay, abounding in shells, which frequently possess a pearly
lustre;'' 3. Hard chalk; 4. Chalk with flints, these two last being
generally white, but in some districts red, and in others yellow. The whole
are, in England, about 1200 feet thick, shewing the considerable depths
of the ocean in which the deposits were made.

Chalk is
a carbonate of lime, and the manner of its production in such vast quantities
was long a subject of speculation among geologists. Some light seemed to
be thrown upon the subject a few years ago, when it was observed, that the
detritus

of coral reefs
in the present tropical seas gave a powder, undistinguishable, when dried,
from ordinary chalk. It then appeared likely that the chalk beds were the
detritus of the corals which were in the oceans of that era Mr. Darwin,
who made some curious inquiries on this point, further suggested, that the
matter might have intermediately passed through the bodies of worms and
fish, such as feed on the corals of the present day, and in whose stomachs
he has found impure chalk. This, however, cannot be a full explanation of
the production of chalk, if we admit some more recent discoveries of Professor
Ehrenberg. That master of microscopic investigation announces, that chalk
is composed partly of "inorganic particles of irregular elliptical structure
and granular slaty disposition," and partly of shells of inconceivable minuteness,
"varying from the one-twelfth to the two hundred and eighty-eighth part
of a line"-a cubic inch of the substance containing above ten millions of
them! The chalk of the north of Europe contains, he says, a larger proportion
of the inorganic matter; that of the south, a larger proportion of the organic
matter, being in some instances almost entirely composed of it. He has been

to the nautili,
nummuli, cyprides, &c. The shells of some are calcareous, of others
siliceous. M. Ehrenberg has likewise detected microscopic seaplants in the
chalk.

The distinctive
feature of the uppermost chalk beds in England, is the presence of flint
nodules. These are generally disposed in layers parallel to each other.
It was readily presumed by geologists that these masses were formed by a
chemical aggregation of particles of silica, originally held in solution
in the mass of the chalk. But whence the silica in a substance so different
from it? Ehrenberg suggests that it is composed of the siliceous coverings
of a portion of the microscopic creatures, whose shells he has in other
instances detected in their original condition. It is remarkable that the
chalk with flint abounds in the north of Europe; that without flints in the south; while in the northern chalk siliceous animalcules are
wanting, and in the southern present in great quantities. The conclusion
seems but natural, that in the one case the siliceous exuviae have been
left in their original form; in the other dissolved chemically, and aggregated
on the common principle of chemical affinity into nodules of flint, probably
concentrating, in every instance, upon a piece of decaying

orgnic matter,
as has been the case with the nodules of ironstone in the earlier rocks,
and the spherules of the oolite.

What is
more remarkable, M. Ehrenberg has ascertained that at least fifty-seven
species of the microscopic animals of the chalk, being infusoria and calcareous-shelled
polythalamia, are still found living in various parts of the earth. These
species are the most abundant in the rock. Singly they are the most unimportant
of all animals, but in the mass, forming as they do such enormous strata
over a large part of the earth's surface, they have an importance greatly
exceeding that of the largest and noblest of the beasts of the field. Moreover,
these species have a peculiar interest, as the only specific types of that
early age which are reproduced in the present day. Species of sea mollusks,
of reptiles, and of mammifers, have been changed again and again, since
the cretaceous era; and it is not till a long subsequent age that we find
the first traces of any other of even the humblest species which now exist;
but here have these humble infusoria and polythalamia kept their place on
earth through all its revolutions since that time, -are we to say, safe
in their very humility, which might adapt them to a greater variety of circum-

stances than
most other animals, or are we required to look for some other explanation
of the phenomenon ?

All the
ordinary and more observable orders of the inhabitants of the sea, except
the cetacea, have been found in the cretaceous formation-zoophytes, radiaria,
mollusks, crustacea, (in great variety of species,) and fishes in smaller
variety. In Europe, remains of the marine saurians have been found; they
may be presumed to have become extinct in that part of the globe before
this time, their place and destructive office being perhaps supplied by
cartilaginous fishes, of which the teeth are found in great quantities.
In America, however, remains of the plesiosaurus have been discovered in
this part of the stratified seriea The reptiles, too, so numerous in the
two preceding periods, appear to have now much diminished in numbers. One,
entitled the mosesaurus, seems to have held an intermediate place between
the monitor and iguana, and to have been about twenty-five feet long, with
a tail calculated to assist it powerfully in swimming. Crocodiles and turtles
existed, and amongst the fishes were some of a saurian character.

fervae are found
enclosed in dints. Of terrestrial vegetation, as of terrestrial animals,
the specimens in the European area are comparatively rare, rendering it
probable that there was no dry land near. The remains are chiefly of ferns,
conifers, and cycadeae, but in the two former cases we have only cones and
leaves. There have been discovered many pieces of wood, containing holes
drilled by the teredo, and thus shewing that they had been long drifted
about in the ocean before being entombed at the bottom.

The series
in America corresponding to this, entitled the ferruginous sand formation,
presents fossils generally identical with those of Europe, not excepting
the fragments of drilled wood; shewing that, in this, as in earlier ages,
there was a parity of conditions for animal life over a vast tract of the
earth's surface. To European reptiles, the American formation adds a gigantic
one, styled the saurodon, from the lizard-like haracter of its teeth.

We have
seen that footsteps of birds are considered to have been discovered in America,
in the new red sandstone. Some similar isolated phenomena occur in the subsequent
formations. Mr. Mantell discovered some bones of birds, apparently

waders, in the
Wealden. The immediate connexion of that set of birds with land, may account,
of course, for their containing a terrestrial organic relic, which the marine
beds above and below did not possess. In the slate of Glarus, in Switzerland,
corresponding to the English galt, in the chalk formation, the remains of
a bird have been found. From a chalk bed near Maidstone, have likewise been
extracted some remains of a bird, supposed to have been of the long-winged
swimmer family, and equal in size to the albatross. These, it must be owned,
are less strong traces of the birds than we possess of the reptiles and
other tribes; but it must be remembered, that the evidence of fossils, as
to the absence of any class of animals from a certain period of the earth's
history, can never be considered as more than negative. Animals, of which
we find no remains in a particular formation, may, nevertheless, have lived
at the time, and it may have only been from unfavourable circumstances that
their remains have not been preserved for our inspection. The single circumstance
of their being little liable to be carried down into seas, might be the
cause of their non-appearance in our quarries. There is at the same time
a limit to uncertainty on this point. We

see, from what
remains have been found in the whole series, a clear progress throughout,
from humble to superior types of being. Hence we derive a light as to what
animals may have existed at particular times, which is in some measure independent
of the specialties of fossilology. The birds are below the mammalia in the
animal scale; and therefore they may be supposed to have existed about the
time of the new red sandstone and oolite, although we find but slight traces
of them in those formations, and, it may be said, till a considerably later
period.

ERA OF THE TERTIARY FORMATION-
MAMMALIA ABUNDANT.

____

THE chalk-beds are the highest which extend over
a considerable space; but in hollows of these beds, comparatively limited
in extent, there have been formed series of strata-clays, limestones, marls,
alternating-to which the name of the Tertiary Formation has been
applied. London and Paris alike rest on basins of this formation, and another
such basin extends from near Winchester, under Southampton, and re-appears
in the Isle of Wight. There is a patch, or fragment of the formation in
one of the Hebrides. A stripe of it extends along the east coast of North
America, from Massachusetts to Florida. It is also found in Sicily and Italy,
insensibly blended with formations still in progress. Though comparatively
a local formation,

it is not of the less importance as a record of the
condition of the earth during a certain period. As in other formations,
it is marked, in the most distant localities, by identity of organic remains.

The hollows filled by the tertiary formation
must be considered as the beds of estuaries left at the conclusion of the
cretaceous period We have seen that an estuary, either by the drifting
up of its mouth, or a change of level in that quarter, may be supposed to
have become an inland sheet of water, and that, by another change, of the
reverse kind, it may be supposed to have become an estuary again. Such changes
the Paris basin appears to have undergone oftener than once, for, first,
we have there a fresh-water formation of clay and limestone beds; then,
a marine-limestone formation, next, a second fresh water formation, in which
the material of the celebrated plaster of Paris, (gypsum) is included;
then, a second marine formation of sandy and limy beds; and finally, a third
series of fresh-water strata. Such alternations occur in other examples
of the tertiary formation likewise.

The tertiary beds present all but an entirely
new set of animals, and as we ascend in the series, we find more and more
of these identical with

species still existing upon earth, as if we had now
reached the dawn of the present state of the zoology of our planet. By the
study of the shells alone, Mr. Lyell has been enabled to divide the whole
term into four sub-periods, to which he has given names with reference to
the proportions which they respectively present of surviving species-first,
the eocene, (from 'ηως, the dawn; χινος,
recent;) second, the miocene, (μειωυ, less;)
third, older pliocene, (πλειαν, more;) fourth,
newer pliocene.

EOCENE SUB-PERIOD.

The eocene period presents, in three continental
groups, 1238 species of shells, of which forty-two, or 3.5 per cent, yet
flourish. Some of these are remarkable enough; but they all sink into insignificance
beside the mammalian remains which the lower eocene deposits of the Paris
basin present to us, shewing that the land had now become the theatre of
an extensive creation of the highest class of animals. Cuvier ascertained
about fifty species of these, all of them long since extinct. A considerable
number are pachydermata,* of a

* Thick-skinned animals. The term has
been given by Cuvier to an order in which the hog, elephant, horse and
rhinoceros are included.

character approximating to the South American tapir:
the names, palacotherium, anthracotherium, anoplotherium, lophiodon, &c.,
have been applied to them with a consideration of more or less conspicuous
peculiarities; but a description of the first may give some general idea
of the whole. It was about the size of a horse, but more squat and clumsy,
and with a heavier head, and a lower jaw shorter than the upper; the feet,
also, instead of hooves, presented three large toes, rounded, and unprovided
with claws. These animals were all herbivorous. Amongst an immense number
of others are found many new reptiles, some of them adapted for fresh water;
species of birds allied to the sea-lark, curlew, quail, buzzard, owl, and
pelican; species allied to the dormouse and squirel; also the opossum and
racoon; and species allied to the genette, fox, and wolf.

MIOCENE SUB-PERIOD.

In the miocene sub-period, the shells give eighteen
per cent. of existing species, shewing a considerable advance from the preceding
era, with respect to the inhabitants of the sea. The advance in the land
animals is less marked, but yet considerable. The predomnating forms are
still pachy-

dermatons, and the tapir type continues to be conspicuous.
One animal of this kind, called the dinotherium, is supposed to have
been not less than eighteen feet long; it had a mole-like form of the shoulder-blade,
conferring the power of digging for food, and a couple of tusks turning
down from the lower jaw, by which it could have attached itself, like the
walrus, to a shore or bank, while its body floated in the water. Dr. Buckland
considers this and some similar miocene animals, as adapted for a semi aquatic
life, in a region where lakes abounded. Besides the tapirs, we have in this
era animals allied to the glutton, the bear, the dog, the horse, the hog,
and lastly, several felin , (creatures of which the lion is the type;)
all of which are new forms, as far as we know. There was also an abundance
of marine mammalia, seals, dolphins, lamantins, walruses, and whales, none
of which had previously appeared.

PLIOCENE SUN-PERIOD.

The shells of the older pliocene give from thirty-
five to fifty; those of the newer, from ninety to ninety-five per cent.
of existing species. The pachydermata of the preceding era now appear,

and are replaced by others belonging to still existing
families elephant, hippopotamus, rhinoceros -though now extinct as species.
Some of these are startling, from their enormous magnitude. The great mastodon,
whose remains are found in abundance in America, was a species of elephant,
judged, from peculiarities of its teeth, to have lived on aquatic plants,
and reaching the height of twelve feet. The mammoth was another elephant,
but supposed to have survived till comparatively recent times, as a specimen,
in all respects entire, was found in 1801, preserved in ice, in Siberia
We are more surprised by finding such gigantic proportions in an animal
called the megatherium, which ranks in an order now assuming much humbler
forms-the edemata-to which the sloth, ant-eater, and armadillo belong. The
megatherium had a skeleton of enormous solidity, with an armour- clad body,
and five toes, terminating in huge claws, wherewith to grasp the branches,
from which, like its existing congener, the sloth, it derived its food.
The megalonyx was a similar animal, only somewhat less than the preceding.
Finally, the pliocene gives us for the first time, oxen, deer, camels, and
other specimens of the ruminantia.

Such is an outline of the fauna of the tertiary
era, as ascertained by the illustrious naturalists who first devoted their
attention to it. It will be observed that it brings us up to the feline,
or carnivora, a considerably elevated point in the animal scale, but still
leaving a blank for the quadrumana (monkeys) and for man, who collectively
form, as will be afterwards seen, the first group in that scale. It sometimes
happens, however, as we have seen, that a few rare traces of a particular
class of animals are in time found in formations originally thought to be
destitute of them, displaying as it were a dawn of that department of creation.
Such seems to be the case with at least the quadrumana A jaw-bone and tooth
of an animal of this order, and belonging to the genus macacus, were found
in the London clay, (eocene,) at Kyson, near Woodbridge, in 1839. Another
jaw-bone, containing several teeth, supposed to have belonged to a species
of monkey about three feet high, was discovered about the same time in a
stratum of marl surmounted by compact limestone, in the department of Gers,
at the foot of the Pyrenees. Associated with this last were remains of not
less than thirty mammiferous quadrupeds, including three species of rhinoceros,
a large anoplotherium, three species

Of deer, two antelopes, a true dog, a large cat,
an animal like a weazel, a small hare, and a huge species of the edemata.
Both of these places are considerably to the north of any region now inhabited
by the monkey tribes. Fossil remains of quadrumana have been found in at
least two other parts of the earth,-namely, the sub-Himalayan hills, near
the Sutlej, and in Brazil, (both in the tertiary strata;) the first being
a large species of semnopithecus, and the second, a still larger animal
belonging to the American group of monkeys, but a new genus, and denominated
by its discoverer, Dr. Lund, protopithecus. The latter would be four feet
in height.

One remarkable circumstance connected with the
tertiary formation remains to be noticed,- namely, the prevalence of volcanic
action at that era. In Auvergne, in Catalonia, near Venice, and in the vicinity
of Rome and Naples, lavas exactly resembling the produce of existing volcanoes,
are associated and intermixed with the lacustrine as well as marine tertiaries.
The superficies of tertiaries in England is disturbed by two great swells,
forming what are called anticlinal axes, one of which divides the London
from the Hampshire basin, while the other passes through

the Isle of Wight, both throwing the strata down
at a violent inclination towards the north, as if the subterranean disturbing
force had waved forward in that direction. The Pyrenees, too, and
Alps, have both undergone elevation since the deposition of the tertiaries;
and in Sicily there are mountains which have risen three thousand feet since
the deposition of some of the most recent of these rocks. The general effect
of these operations was of course to extend the land surface, and to increase
the variety of its features, thus improving the natural drainage, and generally
adapting the earth for the reception of higher classes of animals.

ERA OF THE SUPERFICIAL
FORMATIONS.

COMMENCEMENT OF PRESENT
SPECIES.

____

WE have now completed our survey of the series of
stratified rocks, and traced in their fossils the progress of organic creation
down to a time which seems not long antecedent to the appearance of man.
There are, nevertheless, monuments of still another era or space of time
which it is all but certain did also precede that event.

Over the rock formations of all eras, in various
parts of the globe, but confined in general to situations not very elevated,
there is a layer of stiff clay, mostly of a blue colour, mingled with fragments
of rock of all sizes, travel-worn, and otherwise, and to which geologists
give the name of diluvium, as being apparently the produce of some vast
flood, or of the sea thrown into an unusual

agitation. It seems to indicate that, at the time
when it was laid down, much of the present dry land was under the ocean,
a supposition which we shall see supported by other evidence. The inclded
masses of rock have been carefully inspected in many places, and traced
to particular parent beds at considerable distances Connected with these
phenomena are certain rock surfaces on the slopes of hills and elsewhere,
which exhibit groovings and scratchings, such as we might suppose would
be produced by a quantity of loose blocks hurried along over them by a flood.
Another associated phenomenon is that called crag and tail, which
exists in many places,-namely, a rocky mountain, or lesser elevation, presenting
on one side the naked rock in a more or less abrupt form, and on the other
a gentle slope; the sites of Windsor, Edinburgh, and Stirling, with their
respective castles, are specimens of crag and tail. Finally, we may advert
to certain long ridges of clay and gravel which arrest the attention of
travellers on the surface of Sweden and Finland, and which are also found
in the United States, where, indeed, the whole of these phenomena have been
observed over a large surface, as well as in Europe. It is very remarkable
that the direction from which the

diluvial blocks have generally come, the lines of
the grooved rock surfaces, the direction of the crag and tail eminences,
and that of the clay and gravel ridges-phenomena, be it observed, extending
over the northern parts of both Europe and America-are all from the north
and northwest towards the south-east. We thus acquire the idea of a
powerful current moving in a direction from north-west to south-east, carrying,
besides mud, masses of rock which furrowed the solid surfaces as they passed
along, abrading the northwest faces of many hills, but leaving the slopes
in the opposite direction uninjured, and in some instances forming long
ridges of detritus along the surface. These are curious considerations,
and it has become a question of much interest, by what means, and under
what circumstances, was such a current produced. One hypothetical answer
has some plausibility about it. From an investigation of the nature of glaciers,
and some observations which seem to indicate that these have at one time
extended to lower levels, and existed in regions (the Scottish Highlands
an example) where there is now no perennial snow, it has been surmised that
there was a time, subsequent to the tertiary era) when the circumpolar ice
extended far into

the temperate zone, and formed a lofty, as well as
extensive accumulation. A change to a higher temperature, producing a sudden
thaw of this mass, might set free such a quantity of water as would form
a large flood, and the southward flow of this deluge, joined to the direction
which it would obtain from the rotatory motion of the globe, would of course
produce that compound or south-easterly direction which the phenomena require.
All of these speculations are as yet far too deficient in facts to be of
much value; and I must freely own that, for one, I attach little importance
to them. All that we can legitimately infer from the diluvium is, that the
northern parts of Europe and America were then under the sea, and that a
strong current set over them.

Connected with the diluvium is the history of ossiferous caverns, of which specimens singly exist at Kirkdale in
Yorkshire, Gailenreuth in Franconia, and other places. They occur in the
calcareous strata, as the great caverns generally do, but have in all instances
been naturally closed up till the recent period of teir discovery. The
floors are covered with what appears to be a bed of the diluvial clay, over
which rests a crust of stalagmite, the result of the droppings from the
root since the

time when the clay-bed was laid down. In the instances
above specified, and several others, there have been found, under the clay
bed, assemblages of the bones of animals, of many various kinds. At Kirkdale,
for example, the remains of twenty- four species were ascertained-namely,
pigeon, lark, raven, duck, and partridge; mouse, water-rat, rabbit, hare,
deer, (three species,) ox, horse, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, elephant, weazel,
fox, wolf, bear, tiger, hyena. From many of the bones of the gentler of
these animals being found in a broken state, it is supposed that the cave
was a haunt of hyenas and other predaceous animals, by which the smaller
ones were here consumed. This must have been at a time antecedent to the
submersion which produced the diluvium, since the bones are covered by a
bed of that formation. It is impossible not to see here a very natural series
of incidents. First, the cave is frequented by wild beasts, who make it
a kind of charnelhouse. Then, submerged in the current which has been spoken
of, it receives a clay flooring from the waters containing that matter in
suspension. Finally, raised from the water, but with no mouth to the open
air, it remains unintruded on for a long series of ages, during which the
clay flooring

receives a new calcareous covering, from the droppings
of the roof. Dr. Buckland, who examined and described the Kirkdale cave,
was at first of opinion that it presented a physical evidence of the Noachian
deluge; but he afterwards saw reason to consider its phenomena as of a time
far apart from that event, which rests on evidence of an entirely different
kind.

Our attention is next drawn to the erratic blocks
or boulders, which in many parts of the earth are thickly strewn over the
surface, particularly in the north of Europe. Some of these blocks are many
tons in weight, yet are clearly ascertained to have belonged originally
to situations at a great distance. Fragments, for example, of the granite
of Shap Fell are found in every direction around to the distance of fifty
miles, one piece being placed high upon Criffel Mountain, on the opposite
side of the Solway estuary; so also are fragments of the Alps found far
up the slopes of the Jura. There are even blocks on the east coast of England,
supposed to have travelled from Norway. The only rational conjecture which
can be formed as to the transport of such masses from so great a distance,
is one which presumes them to have been carried and dropped by icebergs,
while the

space between their original and final sites was
under ocean. Icebergs do even now carry off such masses from the polar coasts,
which, falling when the retaining ice melts, must take up situations at
the bottom of the sea analogous to those in which we find the erratic blocks
of the present day.

As the diluvium and erratic blocks clearly suppose
one last long submersion of the surface, (last, geologically speaking,)
there is another set of appearances which as manifestly shew the steps by
which the land was made afterwards to reappear. These consist of terraces,
which have been detected near, and at some distance inlad from, the coast
lines of Scandinavia, Britain, America, and other regions; being evidently
ancient beaches, or platforms, on which the margin of the sea at one time
rested. They have been observed at different heights above the present sea-level,
from twenty to above twelve hundred feet; and in many places they are seen
rising above each other in succession, to the number of three, four, and
even more. The smooth flatness of these terraces, with generally a slight
inclination towards the sea, the sandy composition of many of them, and,
in some instances, the preservation of marine shells in the ground, identify
them perfectly with existing sea-

beaches, notwithstanding the cuts and scoopings which
have every here and there been effected in them by water-courses. The irresistible
inference from the phenomena is, that the highest was first the coast line;
then an elevation took place, and the second highest became so, the first
being now raised into the air and thrown inland. Then, upon another elevation,
the sea began to form, at its new point of contact with the land, the third
highest beach, and so on down to the platform nearest to the present sea-beach.
Phenomena of this kind become comparatively familiar to us, when we hear
of evidence that the last sixty feet of the elevation of Sweden, and the
last eighty-five of that of Chili, have taken place since man first dwelt
in those countries; nay, that the elevation of the former country goes on
at this time at the rate of about forty-five inches in a century, and that
a thousand miles of the Chilian coast rose four feet in one night, under
the influence of a powerful earthquake, so lately as 1822. Subterranean
forces, of the kind then exemplified in Chili, supply a ready explanation
of the whole phenomena, though some other operating causes have been suggested.
In an inquiry on this point, it becomes of consequence to learn some particulars
respecting the

levels. Taking a particular beach, it is generally
observed that the level continues the same along a considerable number of
miles, and nothing like breaks or hitches has as yet been detected in any
case. A second and a third beach are also observed to be exactly parallel
to the first. These facts would seem to indicate quiet elevating movements,
uniform over a large tract. It must, however, be remarked that the raised
beaches at one part of a coast rarely coincide with those at another part
forty or fifty miles off. We might suppose this to indicate a limit in that
extent of the uniformity of the elevating cause, but it would be rash to
conclude positively that such is the case. In the present sea, as is well
known, there are different levels at different places, owing to the operation
of peculiar local causes, as currents, evaporation, and the influx of large
rivers into narrow-mouthed estuaries. The differences of level in the ancient
beaches might be occasioned by some such causes. But, whatever doubt may
rest on this minor point, enough has been ascertained to settle the main
one, that we have in these platforms indubitable monuments of the last rise
of the land from the sea, and the concluding great event of the geological
history.

universal submersion unavoidably suggests some considerations
as to the effect which it might have upon terrestrial anmal life. It seems
likely that this would be, on such an occasion, extensively, if not universally
destroyed. Nor does the idea of its universal destruction seem the less
plausible, when we remark, that none of the species of land animals heretofore
discovered can be detected at a subsequent period. The whole seem to have
been now changed. Some geologists appear much inclined to think that there
was at this time a new development of terrestrial animal life upon the globe,
and M. Agassiz, whose opinion on such a subject must always be worthy of
attention, speaks all but decidedly for such a conclusion. It must, however,
be owned, that proofs for it are still scanty, beyond the bare fact of a
submersion which appears to have had a very wide range. I must therefore
be content to leave this point, as far as geological evidence is concerned,
for future affirmation.

There are some other superficial deposits, of
less consequence on the present occasion than the diluvium-namely, lacustrine
deposits, or filled-up lakes; allovium, or the deposits of rivers beside
their margins; deltas, the deposits made by great ones at their efflux into
the sea; peat mosses; and

the vegetable soil. The animal remains found in these
generally testify to a zoology on the verge of that which still exists,
or melting into it, there being included many species which still exist.
In a lacustrine deposit at Market-Weighton, in the Vale of York, there have
been found bones of the elephant, rhinoceros, bison, wolf, horse, felis,
deer, birds, all or nearly all extinct species; associated with thirteen
species of land and fresh water shells, "exactly identical with types now
living in the vicinity." In similar deposits in North America, are remains
of the mammoth, mastodon, buffalo, and other animals of extinct and living
types. In short, these superficial deposits shew precisely which remains
as might be expected from a time at which the present system of things (to
use a vague but not unexpressive phrase) obtained, but yet so far remote
in chronology as to allow of the dropping of many species, through familiar
causes, in the interval. Still, however, there is no authentic or satisfactory
instance of human remains being found, except in deposits obviously of very
modern date; a tolerably strong proof that the creation of our own species
is a comparatively recent event, and one posterior (generally speaking)
to all the great natural transactions chronicled by geology.

GENERAL
CONSIDERATIONS

RESPECTING

THE ORIGINS OF
THE ANIMATED TRIBES.

---

THUS concludes the wondrous chapter of the earth's
history which is told by geology. It takes up our globe at the period when
its original incandescent state had nearly ceased; conducts it through what
we have every reason to believe were vast, or at least very considerable,
spaces of time, in the course of which many superficial changes took place,
and vegetable and animal life was gradually developed; and drops it just
at the point when man was apparently about to enter on the scene. The compilation
of such a history, from materials of so extraordinary a character, and the
powerful nature of the evidence which these materials afford, are calculated
to excite our admiration, and the result must be allowed

to exalt the dignity of science, as a product of
man's industry and his reason.

If there is any thing more than another impressed
on our minds by the course of the geological history, it is, that the same
laws and conditions of nature now apparent to us have existed throughout
the whole time, though the operation of some of these laws may now be less
conspicuous than in the early ages, from some of the conditions having come
to a settlement and a close. That seas have flowed and ebbed, and winds
disturbed their surfaces, in the time of the secondary rocks, we have proof
on the yet preserved surfaces of the sands which constituted margins of
the seas in those days. Even the fall of wind-slanted rain is evidenced
on the same tablets. The washing down of detached matter from elevated grounds,
which we see rivers constantly engaged in at the present time, and which
is daily shallowing the seas adjacent to their mouths, only appears to have
proceeded on a greater scale in earlier epochs. The volcanic subterranean
force, which we see belching forth lavas on the sides of mountains, and
throwing up new elevations by land and sea, was only more powerfully operative
in distant ages. To turn to organic nature, vegetation seems to have

proceeded then exactly as now. The very alternations
of the seasons has been read in unmistakable characters in sections of the
trees of those days, precisely as it might be read in a section of a tree
cut down yesterday. The system of prey amongst animals flourished throughout
the whole of the pre-human period; and the adaptation of all plants and
animals to their respective spheres of existence was as perfect in those
early ages as it is still.

But, as has been observed, the operation of the
laws may be modified by conditions. At one early age, if there was any dry
land at all, it was perhaps enveloped in an atmosphere unfit for the existence
of terrestrial animals, and which had to go through some changes before
that condition was altered. In the carbonigenous era, dry land seems to
have consisted only of clusters of islands, and the temperature was much
above what now obtains at the same places. Volcanic forces, and perhaps
also the disintegrating power, seem to have been on the decrease since the
first, or we have at least long enjoyed an exemption from such paroxysms
of the former, as appear to have prevailed at the close of the coal formation
in England and throughout the tertiary era. The

surface has also undergone a gradual progress by
which it has become always more and more variegated, and thereby fitted
for the residence of a higher class of animals.

In pursuing the progress of the development of
both plants and animals upon the globe, we have seen an advance in both
cases, along the line leading to the higher forms of organization. Amongst
plants, we have first sea-weeds, afterwards land plants; and amongst these
the simpler (cellular and cryptogamic) before the more complex. In the department
of zoology, we see zoophytes, radiata, mollusca, articulata, existing for
ages before there were any higher forms. The first step forward gives fishes,
the humblest class of the vertebrata; and, moreover, the earliest fishes
partake of the character of the next lowest sub-kingdom, the articulata.
Afterwards come land animals, of which the first are reptiles, universally
allowed to be the type next i advance from fishes, and to be connected
with these by the links of an insensible gradation. From reptiles we advance
to birds, and thence to mammalia, which are commenced by marsupialia, acknowledgedly
low forms in their class. That there is thus a progress of some kind, the
most superficial glance at the geological

history is sufficient to convince us. Indeed the
doctrine of the gradation of animal forms has received a remarkable support
from the discoveries of this science, as several types formerly wanting
to a completion of the series have been found in a fossil state.*

It is scarcely less evident, from the geological
record, that the progress of organic life has observed some correspondence
with the progress of physical conditions on the surface. We do not know
for certain that the sea, at the time when it supported radiated, molluscous,
and articulated families, was incapable of supporting fishes; but causes
for such a limitation are far from inconceivable. The huge saurians appear
to have been precisely adapted to the low muddy coasts and sea margins of
the time when they flourished. Marsupials appear at the time when the surface
was generally in that fiat, imperfectly variegated state in which we find
Australia, the region where they now live in the greatest abundance, and
one which has no higher native mammalian type. Finally, it was not till
the land and sea had come

* Intervals in the series were numerous
in the department of the pachydermata; many of these gaps are now filled
up from the extinct genera found in the tertiary formation.

into their present relations, and the former, in
its principal continents, had acquired the irregularity of surface necessary
for man, that man appeared. We have likewise seen reason for supposing that
land animals could not have lived before the carbonigenous era, owing to
the great charge of carbonic acid gas presumed to have been contained in
the atmosphere down to that time. The surplus of this having gone, as M.
Brogniart suggests, to form the vegetation, whose ruins became coal, and
the air being thus brought to its present state, land animals immediately
appeared. So also, sea-plants were at first the only specimens of vegetation,
because there appears to have been no place where other plants could be
produced or supported. Land vegetation followed, at first simple, afterwards
complex, probably in conformity with an advance of the conditions required
by the higher class of plants. In short, we see everywhere throughout the
geological history, strong traces of a parallel advance of the physical
conditions and the organic forms.

In examining the fossils of the lower marine
creation, with a reference to the kind of rock in connexion, with which
they are found, it is observed that some strata are attended by a much greater
abund-

ance of both species and individuals than others.
They abound most in calcareous rocks, which is precisely what might be expected,
since lime is necessary for the formation of the shells of the mollusks
and articulate, and the hard substance of the crinoidea and corals; next
in the carboniferous series; next in the tertiary; next in the new red sandstone;
next in slates; and lastly, least of all, in the primary rocks.* This may
have been the case without regard to the originaton of new species, but
more probably it was otherwise; or why, for instance, should the polypiferous
zoophyta be found almost exclusively in the limestones?

There are, indeed, abundant appearances as if,
throughout all the changes of the surface, the various kinds of organic
life invariably pressed in, immediately on the specially suitable
conditions arising, so that no place which could support any form of organic
being might be left for any length of time unoccupied. Nor is it less remarkable
how various species are withdrawn from the earth, when the proper conditions
for their particular existence are changed. The trilobite, of which fifty
species existed during the earlier formations,

* See paper by Professor Edward Forbes,
read to the British Association, 1839.

was extirpated before the secondary had commenced,
and appeared no more. The ammonite does not appear above the chalk. The
species, and even genera of all the early radiate and mollusks were exchanged
for others long ago. Not one species of any creature which flourished before
the tertiary (Ehrenberg's infusoria excepted) now exists; and of the mammalia
which arose during that series, many forms are altogether gone, while of
others we have now only kindred species. Thus to find not only frequent
additions to the previously existing forms, but frequent withdrawals of
forms which had apparently become inappropriate-a constant shifting as well
as advance-is a fact calculated very forcibly to arrest attention.

A candid consideration of all these circumstances
can scarcely fail to introduce into our minds a somewhat different idea
of organic creation from what has hitherto been generally entertained. That
God created animated beings, as well as the terraqueous theatre of their
being, is a fact so powerfully evidenced, and so universally received, that
I at once take it for granted. But in the particulars of this so highly
supported idea, we surely here see cause for some re-consideration. It may
now be inquired,-In what way was the creation

of animated beings effected? The ordinary notion
may, I think, be not unjustly described as this,- that the Almighty author
produced the progenitors of all existing species by some sort of personal
or immediate exertion. But how does this notion comport with what we have
seen of the gradual advance of species, from the humblest to the highest?
How can we suppose an immediate exertion of this creative power at one time
to produce zoophytes, another time to add a few marine mollusks, another
to bring in one or two conchifers, again to produce crustaceous fishes,
again perfect fishes, and so on to the end? This would surely be to take
a very mean view of the Creative Power-to, in short, anthropomorphize it,
or reduce it to some such character as that borne by the ordinary proceedings
of mankind. And yet this would be unavoidable; for that the organic creation
was thus progressive through a long space of time, rests on evidence which
nothing can overturn or gainsay. Some other idea must then be come to with
regard to the mode in which the Divine Author proceeded in the organic
creation. Let us seek in the history of the earth's formation for a new
suggestion on this point. We have seen powerful evidence, that the construction
of this

globe and its associates, and inferentially that
of all the other globes of space, was the result, not of any immediate or
personal exertion on the part of the Deity, but of natural laws which are
expressions of his will. What is to hinder our supposing that the organic
creation is also a result of natural laws, which are in like manner an expression
of his will? More than this, the fact of the cosmical arrangements being
an effect of natural law, is a powerful argument for the organic arrangements
being so likewise, for how can we suppose that the august Being who brought
all these countless worlds into form by the simple establishment of a natural
principle flowing from his mind, was to interfere personally and specially
on every occasion when a new shell-fish or reptile was to be ushered into
existence on one of these worlds? Surely this idea is too ridiculous
to be for a moment entertained.

It will be objected that the ordinary conceptions
of Christian nations on this subject are directly derived from Scripture,
or, at least, are in conformity with it. If they were clearly and unequivocally
supported by Scripture, it may readily be allowed that there would be a
strong objection to the reception of any opposite hypothesis. But

the fact is, however startling the present announcement
of it may be, that the first chapter of the Mosaic record is not only not
in harmony with the ordinary ideas of mankind respecting cosmical and organic
creation, but is opposed to them, and only in accordance with the views
here taken. When we carefully peruse it with awakened minds, we find that
all the procedure is represented primarily and pre-eminently as flowing from commands and expressions of his will, not from direct acts.
Let there be light-let there be a firmament-let the dry land appear-let
the earth bring forth grass, the herb, the tree-let the waters bring forth
the moving creature that hath life-let the earth bring forth the living
creature after his kind- these are the terms in which the principal acts
are described. The additional expressions,-God made the firmament-God made
the beast of the earth, &c., occur subordinately, and only in a few
instances; they do not necessarily convey a different idea of the mode of
creation, and indeed only appear as alternative phrases, in the usual duplicative
manner of Eastern narrative. Keeping this in view, the words used in a subsequent
place, "God formed man in his own image," cannot well be understood
as implying any more than

what was implied before,-namely, that man was produced
in consequence of an expression of the Divine will to that effect. Thus,
the scriptural objection quickly vanishes, and the prevalent ideas about
the organic creation appear only as a mistaken inference from the text,
formed at a time when man's ignorance prevented him from drawing there-
from a just conclusion. At the same time, I freely own that I do not think
it right to adduce the Mosaic record, either in objection to, or support
of any natural hypothesis, and this for many reasons, but particularly for
this, that there is not the least appearance of an intention in that book
to give philosophically exact views of nature.

To a reasonable mind the Divine attributes must
appear, not diminished or reduced in any way, by supposing a creation by
law, but infinitely exalted. It is the narrowest of all views of the Deity,
ad characteristic of a humble class of intellects, to suppose him acting
constantly in particular ways for particular occasions. It, for one thing,
greatly detracts from his foresight, the most undeniable of all the attributes
of Omnipotence. It lowers him towards the level of our own humble intellects.
Much more worthy of him it surely is, to suppose that all things have been
commissioned by him from the first,

though neither is he absent from a particle of the
current of natural affairs in one sense, seeing that the whole system is
continually supported by his providence. Even in human affairs, if I may
be allowed to adopt a familiar illustration, there is a constant progress
from specific action for particular occasions, to arrangements which, once
established, shall continue to answer for a great multitude of occasions.
Such plans the enlightened readily form for themselves, and conceive as
being adopted by all who have to attend to a multitude of affairs, while
the ignorant suppose every act of the greatest public functionary to be
the result of some special consideration and care on his part alone. Are
we to suppose the Deity adopting plans which harmonize only with the modes
of procedure of the less enlightened of our race? Those who would object
to the hypothesis of a creation by the intervention of law, do not perhaps
consider how powerful an argument in favour of the existence of God is lost
by rejecting this doctrine. When all is seen to be the result of law, the
idea of an Almighty Author becomes irresistible, for the creation of a law
for an endless series of phenomena -an act of intelligence above all else
that we can conceive-could have no other imaginable source,

and tells, moreover, as powerfully for a sustaining
as for an originating power. On this point a remark of Dr. Buckland seems
applicable: "If the properties adopted by the elements at the moment of
their creation adapted them beforehand to the infinity of complicated useful
purposes which they have already answered, and may have still farther to
answer, under many dispensations of the material world, such an aboriginal
constitution, so far from superseding an intelligent agent, would only exalt
our conceptions of the consummate skill and power that could comprehend
such an infinity of future uses under future systems, in the original groundwork
"

A late writer, in a work embracing a vast amount
of miscellaneous knowledge, but written in a dogmatic style, argues at great
length for the doctrine of more immediate exertions on the part of the Deity
in the works of his creation. One of the most striking of his illustrations
is as follows:— "The coral polypi, united by a common animal bond, construct
a defined form in stone; many kinds construct many forms. An allotted instinct
may permit each polypus to construct its own cell, but there is no superintending

for such an end. There is no recipient for an instinct
by which the pattern might be constructed. It is God alone, therefore, who
is the architect; and for this end, consequently, he must dispose of every
new polypus required to continue the pattern, in a new and peculiar position,
which the animal could not have discovered by itself. Yet more, millions
of these blind workers unite thir works to form an island, which is also
wrought out according to a constant general pattern, and of a very peculiar
nature, though the separate coral works are numerously diverse. Still less,
then, here is an instinct possible. The Great Architect himself must execute
what he planned, in each case equally. He uses these little and senseless
animals as hands; but they are hands which himself must direct. He must
direct each one every- where, and therefore he is ever acting."* This is
a most notable example of a dangerous kind of reasoning. It is now believed
that corals have a general life and sensation throughout the whole mass,
residing in the nervous tissue which envelops them; consequently, there
is nothing more wonderful in their determinate general forms than in those
of other animals.

It may here be remarked that there is in our
doctrine that harmony in all the associated phenomena which generally marks
great truths. First, it agrees, as we have seen, with the idea of planet-
creation by natural law. Secondly, upon this supposition, all that geology
tells us of the succession of species appears natural and intelligible.
Organic life presses in, as has been remarked, wherever there was
room and encouragement for it, the forms being always such as suited the
circumstances, and in a certain relation to them, as, for example, where
the limestone-forming seas produced an abundance of corals, crinoidea, and
shellfish. Admitting for a moment a re-origination of species after a cataclysm,
as has been surmised by some geologists, though the hypothesis is always
becoming less and less tenable, it harmonizes with nothing so well as the
idea of a creation by law. The more solitary commencements of species, which
would have been the most inconceivably paltry exercise for an immediately
creative power, are sufficiently worthy of one operating by laws.

It is also to be observed, that the thing to
be accounted for is not merely the origination of organic being upon this
little planet, third of a series which is but one of hundreds of thousands

of series, the whole of which again form but one
portion of an apparently infinite globe-peopled space, where all seems analogous.
We have to suppose, that every one of these numberless globes is either
a theatre of organic being, or in the way of becoming so. This is a conclusion
which every addition to our knowledge makes only the more irresistible.
Is it conceivable, as a fitting mode of exercise for creative intelligence,
that it should be constantly moving from one sphere to another, to form
and plant the various species which may be required in each situation at
particular times? Is such an idea accordant with our general conception
of the dignity, not to speak of the power, of the Great Author? Yet such
is the notion which we must form, if we adhere to the doctrine of special
exercise. Let us see, on the other hand, how the doctrine of a creation
by law agrees with this expanded view of the organic world.

Unprepared as most men may be for such an announcement,
there can be no doubt that we are able, in this limited sphere, to form
some satisfactory conclusions as to the plants and animals of those other
spheres which move at such immense distances from us. Suppose that the first
persons of an early nation who made a shi and ventured

to sea in it, observed, as they sailed along, a set
of objects which they had never before seen-namely, a fleet of other ships-would
they not have been justified in supposing that those ships were occupied,
like their own, by human beings possessing hands to row and steer, eyes
to watch the signs of the weather, intelligence to guide them from one place
to another-in short, beings in all respects like themselves, or only shewing
such differences as they knew to be producible by difference of climate
and habits of life. Precisely in this manner we can speculate on the inhabitants
of remote spheres. We see that matter has originally been diffused in one
mass, of which the spheres are portions. Consequently, inorganic matter
must be presumed to be everywhere the same, although probably with differences
in the proportions of ingredients in different globes, and also some difference
of conditions. Out of a certain number of the elements of inorganic matter
are composed organic bodies, both vegetable and animal; such must be the
rule in Jupiter and in Sirius, as it is here. We, therefore, are all but
certain that herbaceous and ligneous fibre, that flesh and blood, are the
constituents of the organic beings of all those spheres which are as yet
seats of life. Gra-

vitation we see to be an all-pervading principle:
therefore there must be a relation between the spheres and their respective
organic occupants, by virtue of which they are fixed, as far as necessary,
on the surface. Such a relation, of course, involves details as to the density
and elasticity of structure, as well as size, of the organic tenants, in
proportion to the gravity of the respective planets- peculiarities, however,
which may quite well consist with the idea of a universality of general
types, to which we are about to come. Electricity we also see to be universal;
if, therefore, it be a principle concerned in life and in mental action,
as science strongly suggests, life and mental action must everywhere be
of one general character. We come to comparatively a matter of detail, when
we advert to heat and light; yet it is important to consider that these
are universal agents, and that, as they bear marked relations to organic
life and structure on earth, they may be presumed to do so in other spheres
also. The considerations as to light are particularly interesting, for,
on our globe, the structure of one important organ, almost universally distributed
in the animal kingdom, is in direct and precise relation to it. Where there
is light there will be eyes, and these, in other spheres,

will be the same in all respects as the eyes of tellurian
animals, with only such differences as may be necessary to accord with minor
peculiarities of condition and of situation. It is but a small stretch of
the argument to suppose that, one conspicuous organ of a large portion of
our animal kingdom being thus universal, a parity in all the other organs-species
for species, class for class, kingdom for kingdom-is highly likely, and
that thus the inhabitants of all the other globes of space bear not only
a general, but a particular resemblance to those of our own.

Assuming that organic beings are thus spread
over all space, the idea of their having all come into existence by the
operation of laws everywhere applicable, is only conformable to that principle,
acknowledged to be so generally visible in the affairs of Providence, to
have all done by the employment of the smallest possible amount of means.
Thus, as one set of laws produced all orbs and their motions and geognostic
arrangements, so one set of laws overspread them all with life. The whole
productive or creative arrangements are therefore in perfect unity.

PARTICULAR CONSIDERATIONS

RESPECTING

THE ORIGIN OF THE ANIMATED TRIBES.

____

THE general likelihood of an organic creation by law having been shewn, we are next to inquire if science has any facts tending to bring the assumption more nearly home to nature. Such facts there certainly are; but it cannot be surprising that they are comparatively few and scattered, when we consider that the inquiry is into one of nature's profoundest mysteries, and one which has hitherto engaged no direct attention in almost any quarter.

Crystallization is confessedly a phenomenon of inorganic matter; yet the simplest rustic observer is struck by the resemblance which the examples of it left upon a window by frost bear to vegetable forms. In some crystallizations the mimicry is

beautiful and complete; for example, in the well- known one called the Arbor Dian. An amalgam of four parts of silver and two of mercury being dissolved in nitric acid, and water equal to thirty weights of the metals being added, a small piece of soft amalgam of silver suspended in the solution, quickly gathers to itself the particles of the silver of the amalgam, which form upon it a crystallization precisely resembling shrub. The experiment may be varied in a way which serves better to detect the influence of electricity in such operations, as noted below.* Vegetable figures are also presented in some of the most ordinary appear-

* "A glass tube is to be bent into a syphon, and placed with the curve downwards, and in the bend is to be placed a small portion of mercury, not sufficient to close the connexion between the two legs; a solution of nitrate of silver is then to be introduced until it rises in both limbs of the tube. The precipitation of the mercury, in the form of an Arbor Dian , will then take place, slowly, only when the syphon is placed in a plane perpendicular to the magnetic meridian; but if it be placed in a plane coinciding with the magnetic meridian, the action is rapid, and the crystallization particularly beautiful, taking place principally in that branch of the syphon towards the north. If the syphon be placed in a plane perpendicular to the magnetic meridian, and a strong magnet brought near it, the precipitation will commence in a short time, and be most copious in the branch of the syphon nearest to the south pole of the magnet."

ances of the electric fluid. In the marks caused by positive electricity, or which it leaves in its passage, we see the ramifications of a tree, as well as of its individual leaves; those of the negative, recal the bulbous or the spreading root, according as they are clumped or divergent. These phenomena seem to say that the electric energies have had something to do in determining the forms of plants. That they are intimately connected with vegetable life is indubitable, for germination will not proceed in water charged with negative electricity, while water charged positively greatly favours it; and a garden sensibly increases in luxuriance, when a number of conducting rods are made to terminate in branches over its beds. With regard to the resemblance of the ramifications of the branches and leaves of plants to the traces of the positive electricity, and that of the roots to the negative, it is a circumstance calling for especial remark, that the atmosphere, particularly its lower strata, is generally charged positively, while the earth is always charged negatively. The correspondence here is curious. A plant thus appears as a thing formed on the basis of a natural electrical operation-the brush realized.

We can thus suppose the various forms of plants as, immediately, the result of a law in electricity variously affecting them according to their organic character, or respective germinal constituents. In the poplar, the brush is unusually vertical, and little divergent; the reverse in the beech: in the palm, a pencil has proceeded straight up for a certain distance, radiates there, and turns outwards and downwards; and so on. We can here see at least traces of secondary means by which the Almighty Deviser might establish all the vegetable forms with which the earth is overspread

Vegetable and animal bodies are mainly composed of the same four simple substances or elements-carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen. The first combinations of these in animals are into what are called proximate principles, as albumen, fibrin, urea, alantoin, &c., out of which the structure of the animal body is composed. Now the chemist, by the association of two parts oxygen, four hydrogen, two carbon, and two nitrogen, can make urea. Alantoin has also been produced artificially. Two of the proximate principles being realizable by human care, the possibility of realizing or forming all is established. Thus the chemist may be said to have it in his power to realize the

first step in organization.* Indeed, it is fully acknowledged by Dr. Daubeny, that in the combinations forming the proximate principles there is no chemical peculiarity. "It is now certain," he says, "that the same simple laws of composition pervade the whole creation; and that, if the organic chemist only takes the requisite precautions to avoid resolving into their ultimate elements the proximate principles upon which he operates, the results of his analysis will shew that they are combined precisely according to the same plan as the elements of mineral bodies are known to be.'' A particular fact is here worthy of attention. "The conversion of fecula into sugar, as one of the ordinary processes of vegetable economy, is effected by the production of a secretion termed diastose, which occasions both the rupture of the starch vesicles, and the change of their contained gum into sugar. This diastose may be separately obtained by the chemist, and it acts as effectually in his laboratory as in the vegetable organization.

* Fatty matter has also been formed in the laboratory. The process in passing a mixture of carbonic acid, pure hydrogen, and carburetted hydrogen, in the proportion of one measure of the first, twenty of the second, and ten of the third, through a red-hot tube.

He can also imitate its effects by other chemical agents."* The writer quoted below adds, "No reasonable ground has yet been adduced for supposing that, if we had the power of bringing together the elements of any organic compound, in their requisite states and proportions, the result would be any other than that which is found in the living body."

It is much to know the elements out of which organic bodies are composed. It is something more to know their first combinations, and that these are simply chemical. How these combinations are associated in the structure of living bodies is the next inquiry, but it is one to which as yet no satisfactory answer can be given. The investigation of the minutiae of organic structure by the microscope is of such recent origin, that its results cannot be expected to be very clear. Some facts, however, are worthy of attention with regard to the present inquiry. It is ascertained that the basis of all vegetable and animal substances consists of nucleated cells, that is, cells having granules within them. Nutriment is converted into these before being assimilated by the system. The tissues are formed from them. The ovum

destined to become a new creature, is originally only a cell with a contained granule. We see it acting this reproductive part in the simplest manner in the cryptogamic plants. "The parent cell, arrived at maturity by the exercise of its organic functions, bursts, and liberates its contained granules. These, at once thrown upon their own resources, and entirely dependent for their nutrition on the surrounding elements, develop themselves into new cells, which repeat the life of their original. Amongst the higher tribes of the cryptoganua, the reproductive cell does not burst, but the first cells of the new structure are developed within it, and these gradually extend, by a similar process of multiplication, into that primary leaf-like expansion which is the first formed structure in all plants."* Here the little cell becomes directly a plant, the full formed living being. It is also worthy of remark that, in the sponges, (an animal form,) a gemmule detached from the body of the parent, and trusting for sustentation only to the fluid into which it has been cast, becomes, without further process, the new creature. Further, it has been recently discovered by means of the micro-

* Carpenter's Report on the results obtained by the microscope in the Study of Anatomy and Physiology, 1843.

scope, that there is, as far as can be judged, a perfect resemblance between the ovum of the mammal tribes, during that early stage when it is passing through the oviduct, and the young of the infusory animalcules. One of the most remarkable of these, the volvox globator, has exactly the form of the germ which, after passing through a long foetal progress, becomes a complete mammifer, an animal of the highest class. It has even been found that both are alike provided with those cilia, which, producing a revolving motion, or its appearance, is partly the cause of the name given to this animalcule. These resemblances are the more entitled to notice, that they were made by various observers, distant from each other at the time.* It has likewise been noted that the globules of the blood are reproduced by the expansion of contained granules; they are, in short, distinctorganisms multiplied by the same fissiparous generation. So that all animated nature may be said to be based on this mode of origin; the fundamental form of organic being is a globule, having a new globule forming within itself, by which it is in time

* See Dr. Martin Barry on Fissiparous Generation; Jameson's Journal, Oct. 1843. Appearances precisely similar have been detected in the germs of the crustacea.

discharged, and which is again followed by another and another, in endless succession. It is of course obvious that, if these globules could be produced by any process from inorganic elements, we should be entitled to say that the fact of a transit from the inorganic into the organic had been witnessed in that instance; the possibility of the commencement of animated creation by the ordinary laws of nature might be considered as established. Now it was given out some years ago by a French physiologist, that globules could be produced in albumen by electricity. If, therefore, these globules be identical with the cells which are now held to be reproductive, it might be said that the production of albumen by artificial means is the only step in the process wanting. This has not yet been effected; but it is known to be only a chemical process, the mode of which may be any day discovered in the laboratory, and two compounds perfectly co- ordinate, urea and alantoin, have actually been produced.

In such an investigation as the present, it is not unworthy of notice that the production of shell is a natural operation which can be precisely imitated artificially. Such an incrustation takes place on both the outside and inside of the wheel in a

bleaching establishment, in which cotton cloth is rinsed free of the lime employed in its purification. From the dressing employed by the "weaver, the cloth obtains the animal matter, gelatin; this and the lime form the constituents of the incrustation, exactly as in natural shell. In the wheel employed at Catrine, in Ayrshire, where the phenomenon was first observed by the eye of science, it had required ten years to produce a coating the tenth of an inch in thickness. This incrustation has all the characters of shell, displaying a highly polished surface, beautifully iridescent, and, when broken, a foliated texture. The examination of it has even thrown some light on the character and mode of formation of natural shell. "The plates into which the substance is divisible have been formed in succession, and certain intervals of time have elapsed between their formation; in general, every two contiguous laminae are separated by a thin iridescent film, varying from the three to the fifty millionth part of an inch in thickness, and producing all the various colours of thin plates which correspond to intermediate thicknesses: between some of the laminae no such film exists, probably in consequence of the interval of time between their formation being too short; and between

others the film has been formed of unequal thickness. There can be no doubt that these iridescent films are formed when the dash-wheel is at rest during the night, and that when no film exists between two laminae, an interval too short for its formation, (arising, perhaps, from the stopping of the work during the day,) has elapsed during the drying or induration of one lamina and the deposition of another."* From this it has been deduced, by a patient investigation, that those colours of mother-of-pearl, which are incommunicable to wax, arise from iridescent films deposited between the laminae of its structure, and it is hence inferred that the animal, like the wheel, rests periodically from its labours in forming the natural substance.

These, it will be owned, are curious and not irrelevant facts; but it will be asked what actual experience says respecting the origination of life. Are there, it will be said, any authentic instances of either plants or animals, of however humble and simple a kind, having come into existence otherwise than in the ordinary way of generation, since the time of which geology forms the record ? It

may be answered, that the negative of this question could not be by any means formidable to the doctrine of law-creation, seeing that the conditions necessary for the operation of the supposed life- creating laws may not have existed within record to any great extent. On the other hand, as we see the physical laws of early times still acting with more or less force, it might not be unreasonable to expect that we should still see some remnants, or partial and occasional workings of the life-creating energy amidst a system of things generally stable and at rest. Are there, then, any such remnants to be traced in our own day, or during man's existence upon earth ? If there be, it clearly would form a strong evidence in favour of the doctrine, as what now takes place upon a confined scale and in a comparatively casual manner may have formerly taken place on a great scale, and as the proper and eternity-destined means of supplying a vacant globe with suitable tenanta It will at the same time be observed that, the earth being now supplied with both kinds of tenants in great abundance, we only could expect to find the life-originating power at work in some very special and extraordinary circumstances, and

probably only in the inferior and obscurer departments of the vegetable and animal kingdoms.

Perhaps, if the question were asked of ten men of approved reputation in science, nine out of the number would answer in the negative. This is because, in a great number of instances where the superficial observers of former times assumed a non-generative origin for life, (as in the celebrated case in Virgil's fourth Georgic,) either the direct contrary has been ascertained, or exhaustive experiments have left no alternative from the conclusion that ordinary generation did take place, albeit in a manner which escapes observation. Finding that an erroneous assumption has been formed in many cases, modern inquirers have not hesitated to assume that there can be no case in which generation is not concerned; an assumption not only unwarranted by, but directly opposed to, the principles of philosophical investigation. Yet this is truly the point at which the question now rests in the scientific world.

I have no wish here to enter largely into a subject so wide and so full of difficulties; but I may remark, that the explanations usually suggested where life takes its rise without apparent generative means,

always appear to e to partake much of the fallacy of the pettito principii. When, for instance, lime is laid down upon a piece of waste moss ground, and a crop of white clover for which no seeds were sown is the consequence, the explanation that the seeds have been dormant there for an unknown time, and were stimulated into germination when the lime produced the appropriate circumstances, appears extremely unsatisfactory, especially when we know that (as in an authentic case under my notice) the spot is many miles from where clover is cultivated, and that there is nothing for six feet below but pure peat moss, clover seeds being, moreover, known to be too heavy to be transported, as many other seeds are, by the winds. Mushrooms, we know, can be propagated by their seed; but another mode of raising them, well known to the gardener, is to mix cow and horse dung together, and thus form a bed in which they are expected to grow without any seed being planted. It is assumed that the seeds are carried by the atmosphere, unperceived by us, and, finding here an appropriate field for germination, germinate accordingly; but this is only assumption, and though designed to be on the side of a severe philosophy, in reality makes a pretty large demand on credu-

lity. There are several persons eminent in science who profess at least to find great difficulties in accepting the doctrine of invariable generation. One of these, in the work noted below,* has stated several considerations arising from analogical reasoning, which appear to him to throw the balance of evidence in favour of the aboriginal production of infusoria, the vegetation called mould, and the like. One seems to be of great force; namely, that the animalcules, which are supposed (altogether hypothetically) to be produced by ova, are afterwards found increasing their numbers, not by that mode at all, but by division of their bodies. If it be the nature of these creatures to propagate in this splitting or fissiparous manner, how could they be communicated to a vegetable infusion? Another fact of very high importance is presented in the following terms:— "The nature of the animalcule, or vegetable production, bears a constant relation to the state of the infusion, so that, in similar circumstances, the same are always produced without this being influenced by the atmosphere. There

* Dr. Allen Thomson, in the article Generation, in Todd's Cyclopaedia of Anatomy and Physiology.

The term aboriginal is here suggested, as more correct than spontaneous, the one hitherto generally used.

seems to be a certain progressive advance in the productive powers of the infusion, for at the first the animalcules are only of the smaller kinds, or monades, and afterwards they become gradually larger and more complicated in their structure; after a time, the production ceases, although the materials are buy no means exhausted. When the quantity of water is very small, and the organic matter abundant, the production is usually of a vegetable nature; when there is much water, animalcules are more frequently produced." It has been shewn by the opponents of this theory, that when a vegetable infusion is debarred from the contact of the atmosphere, by being closely sealed up or covered with a layer of oil, no animalcules are produced; but it has been said, on the other hand, that the exclusion of the air may prevent some simple condition necessary for the aboriginal development of life- and nothing is more likely. Perhaps the prevailing doctrine is in nothing placed in greater difficulties than it is with regard to the entozoa, or creatures which live within the bodies of others. These creatures do, and apparently can, live nowhere else than in the interior of other living bodies, where they generally take up their abode in the viscera, but also sometimes in the chambers

of the eye, the interior of the brain, the serous sacs, and other places having no communication from without. Some are viviparous, others oviparous. Of the latter it cannot reasonably be supposed that the ova ever pass through the medium of the air, or through the blood-vessels, for they are too heavy for the one transit, and too large for the other. Of the former, it cannot be conceived how they pass into young animals certainly not by communication from the parent, for it has often been found that entozoa do not appear in certain generations, and some of peculiar and noted character have only appeared at rare intervals, and in very extraordinary circumstances. A candid view of the less popular doctrine, as to the origin of this humble form of life, is taken by a distinguished living naturalist. "To explain the beginning of these worms within the human body, on the common doctrine that all created beings proceed from their likes, or a primordial egg, is so difficult, that the moderns have been driven to speculate, as our fathers did, on their spontaneous birth; but they have received the hypothesis with some modification. Thus it is not from putrefaction or fermentation that the entozoa are born, for both of these processes are rather fatal to their existence,

but from the aggregation and fit apposition of matter which is already organized, or has been thrown from organized surfaces. * * Their origin in this manner is not more wonderful or more inexplicable than that of many of the inferior animals from sections of themselves. * * Particles of matter fitted by digestion, and their transmission through a living body, for immediate assimilation with it, or flakes of lymph detached from surfaces already organized, seem neither to exceed nor fall below that simplicity of structure which favours this wonderful development; and the supposition that, like morsels of a planaria, they may also, when retained in contact with living parts, and in other favourable circumstances, continue to live and be gradually changed into creatures of analogous conformation, is surely not so absurd as to be brought into comparison with the Metamorphoses of Ovid. * * We think the hypothesis is also supported in some degree by the fact, that the origin of the entozoa is favoured by all causes which tend to disturb the equality between the secerning and absorbent systems."* Here particles of organized matter are suggested as the germinal origin of distinct and

fully organized animals, many of which have a highly developed reproductive system. How near such particles must be to the inorganic form of matter may be judged from what has been said within the last few pages. If, then, this view of the production of entozoa be received, it must be held as in no small degree favourable to the general doctrine of an organic creation by law.

There is another series of facts, akin to the abov, and which deserve not less attention. The pig, in its domestic state, is subject to the attacks of a hydatid, from which the wild animal is free; hence the disease called measles in pork. The domestication of the pig is of course an event subsequent to the origin of man; indeed, comparatively speaking, a recent event. Whence, then, the first progenitor of this hydatid ? So also there is a tinea which attacks dressed wool, but never touches it in its unwashed state. A particular insect disdains all food but chocolate, and the larva of the oinopota cellars lives nowhere but in wine and beer, all of these being articles manufactured by man. There is likewise a creature called the pimelodes cyclopum, which is only found in subterranean cavities connected with certain specimens of the volcanic formation in South

America, dating from a time posterior to the arrangements of the earth for our species. Whence the first pymelodes cyclopum ? Will it, to a geologist, appear irrational to suppose that, just as the pterodactyle was added in the era of the new red sandstone, when the earth had become suited for such a creature, so may these creatures have been added when media suitable for their existence arose, and that such phenomena may take place any day, the only cause for their taking place seldom being the rarity of the rise of new physical conditions on a globe which seems to have already undergone the principal part of its destined mutations ?

Between such isolated facts and the greater changes which attended various geological eras, it is not easy to see any difference, besides simply that of the scale on which the respective phenomena took place, as the throwing off of one copy from an engraved plate is exactly the same process as that by which a thousand are thrown off. Nothing is more easy to conceive than that to Creative Providence, the numbers of such phenomena, the time when, and the circumstances under which they take place, are indifferent matters. The Eternal One has arranged for everything

beforehand, and trusted all to the operation of the laws of his appointment, himself being ever present in all things. We can even conceive that man, in his many doings upon the surface of the earth, may occasionally, without his being aware of it, or otherwise, act as an instrument in preparing the association of conditions under which the creative laws work; and perhaps some instances of his having acted as such an instrument have actually occurred in our own time.

I allude, of course, to the experiments conducted a few years ago by Mr. Crosse, which seemed to result in the production of a heretofore unknown species of insect in considerable numbers. Various causes have prevented these experiments and their results from receiving candid treatment, but they may perhaps be yet found to have opened up a new and most interesting chapter of nature's mysteries. Mr. Crosse was pursuing some experiments in crystallization, causing a powerful voltaic battery to operate upon a saturated solution of silicate of potash, when the insects unexpectedly made their appearance. He afterwards tried nitrate of copper, which is a deadly poison, and from that fluid also did live insects emerge. Discouraged by the reception of his experiments,

Mr. Crosse soon discontinued them; but they were some years after pursued by Mr. Weekes, of Sandwich, with precisely the same results. This gentleman besides trying the first of the above substances, employed ferro-cyanet of potash, on account of its containing a larger proportion of carbon, the principal element of organic bodies; and from this substance the insects were produced in increased numbers. A few weeks sufficed for this experiment, with the powerful battery of Mr. Crosser but the first attempts of Mr. Weekes required about eleven months, a ground of presumption in itself that the electricity was chiefly concerned in the phenomenon. The changes undergone by the fluid operated upon, were in both cases remarkable, and nearly alike. In Mr. Weekes' apparatus, the silicate of potash became first turbid, then of a milky appearance; round the negative wire of the battery, dipped into the fluid, there gathered a quantity of gelatinous matter, a part of the process of considerable importance, considering that gelatin is one of the proximate principles, or first compounds, of which animal bodies are formed. From this matter Mr. Weekes observed one of the insects in the very act of emerging, immediately after which, it ascended

to the surface of the fluid, and sought concealment in an obscure corner of the apparatus. The insects produced by both experimentalists seem to have been the same, a species of acarus, minute and semi-transparent, and furnished with long bristles, which can only be seen by the aid of the microscope. It is worthy of remark, that some of these insects, soon after their existence had commenced, were found to be likely to extend their species. They were sometimes observed to go back to the fluid to feed, and occasionally they devoured each other.

The reception of novelties in science must ever be regulated very much by the amount of kindred or relative phenomena which the public mind already possesses and acknowledges, to which the new can be assimilated. A novelty, however true, if there be no received truths with which it can be shewn in harmonious relation, has little chance of a favourable hearing. In fact, as has been often observed, there is a measure of incredulity from our ignorance as well as from our knowledge, and if the most distinguished philosopher three- hundred years ago had ventured to develop any striking new fact which only could

harmonize with the as yet unknown Copernican solar system, we cannot doubt that it would have been universally scoffed at in the scientific world, such as it then was, or at the best interpreted in a thousand wrong ways in conformity with ideas already familiar. The experiments above described, finding a public mind which had never discovered a fact or conceived an idea at all analogous, were of course ungraciously received. It was held to be impious, even to surmise that animals could have been formed through any instrumentality of an apparatus devised by human skill. The more likely account of the phenomena was said to be, that the insects were only developed from ova, resting either in the fluid, or in the wooden frame on which the experiments took place. On these objections the following remarks may be made. The supposition of impiety arises from an entire misconception of what is implied by an aboriginal creation of insects. The experimentalist could never be considered as the author of the existence of these creatures, except by the most unreasoning ignorance. The utmost that can be claimed for, or imputed to him is tat he arranged the natural conditions under which the true creative energy-that of the Divine

Author of all things-has pleased to work in that instance. On the hypothesis here brought forward, the acarus Crossii was a type of being ordained from the beginning, and destined to be realized under certain physical conditions. When a human hand brought these conditions into the proper arrangement, it did an act akin to hundreds of familiar ones which we execute every day, and which are followed by natural results; but it did nothing more. The production of the insect, if it did take place as assumed, was as clearly an act of the Almighty himself, as if he had fashioned it with hands. For the presumption that an act of aboriginal creation did take place, there is this to be said, that, in Mr. Weekes's experiment, every care that ingenuity could devise was taken to exclude the possibility of a development of the insects from ova. The wood of the frame was baked in a powerful heat; a bell-shaped glass covered the apparatus, and from this the atmosphere was excluded by the constantly rising fumes from the liquid, for the emission of which there was an aperture so arranged at the top of the glass, that only these fumes could pass. The water was distilled, and the substance of the silicate had been subjected to white heat. Thus every source of

fallacy seemed to be shut up. In such circumstances, a candid mind, which sees nothing either impious or unphilosophical in the idea of a new creation, will be disposed to think that there is less difficulty in believing in such a creation having actually taken place, than in believing that, in two instances, separated in place and time, exactly the same insects should have chanced to arise from concealed ova, and these a species heretofore unknown.

HYPOTHESIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT

OF THE

VEGETABLE AND
ANIMAL KINGDOMS.

___

IT has been already intimated, as a general fact,
that there is an obvious gradation amongst the families of both the vegetable
and animal kingdoms, from the simple lichen and animalcule respectively
up to the highest order of dicotyledonous trees and the mammalia. Confining
our attention, in the meantime, to the animal kingdom-it does not appear
that this gradation passes along one line, on which every form of animal
life can be, as it were, strung; there may be branching or double lines
at some places; or the whole may be in a circle composed of minor circles,
as has been recently suggested. But still it is incontestable that there
are general appearances of a scale beginning

with the simple and advancing to the complicated.
The animal kingdom was divided by Cuvier into four sub-kingdoms, or divisions,
and these exhibit an unequivocal gradation in the order in which they are
here enumerated:—Radiata, (polypes, &c.;) mollusca, (pulpy animals;) articulate, (jointed animals;) vertebrate, (animals with internal skeleton.)
The gradation can, in like manner, be clearly traced in the classes into
which the sub-kingdoms are Subdivided, as, for instance, when we take those
of the vertebrate in this order -reptiles, fishes, birds, mammals.

While the external forms of all these various
animals are so different, it is very remarkble that the whole are, after
all, variations of a fundamental plan, which can be traced as a basis throughout
the whole, the variations being merely modifications of that plan to suit
the particular conditions in which each particular animal has been designed
to live. Starting from the primeval germ, which, as we have seen, is the representative of a particular order of full-grown animals, we find
all others to be merely advances from that type, with the extension of endowments
and modification of forms which are required in each particular case; each
form, also, retaining a strong affinity to that

which precedes it, and tending to impress its own
features on that which succeeds. This unity of structure, as it is called,
becomes the more remarkable, when we observe that the organs, while preserving
a resemblance, are often put to different uses. For example: the ribs become,
in the serpent, organs of locomotion, and the snout is extended, in the
elephant, into a prehensile instrument.

It is equally remarkable that analogous purposes
are served in different animals by organs essentially different. Thus, the
mammalia breathe by lungs; the fishes, by gills. These are not modifications
of one organ, but distinct organs. In mammifers, the gills exist and act
at an early stage of the foetal state, but afterwards go back and appear
no more; while the lungs are developed. In fishes, again, the gills only
are fully developed; while the lung structure either makes no advance at
all, or only appears in the rudimentary form of an air- bladder. So, also,
the baleen of the whale and the teeth of the land mammalia are different
organs. The whale, in embryo, shews the rudiments of teeth; but these, not
being wanted are not developed, and the baleen is brought forward instead.
The land animals, we may also be sure, have the rudiments of baleen in their
organization. In

many instances, a particular structure is found advanced
to a certain point in a particular set of animals, (for instance, feet in
the serpent tribe,) although it is not there required in any degree; but
the peculiarity, being carried a little farther forward, is perhaps useful
in the next set of animals in the scale. Such are called rudimentary organs.
With this class of phenomena are to be ranked the useless mammae of the
male human being, and the unrequired process of bone in the male opossum,
which is needed in the female for supporting her pouch. Such curious features
are most conspicuous in animals which form links between various classes.

As formerly stated, the marsupials, standing
at the bottom of the mammalia, shew their affinity to the oviparous vertebrate,
by the rudiments of two canals passing from near the anus to the external
surfaces of the viscera, which are fully developed in fishes, being required
by them for the respiration of aerated waters, but which are not needed
by the atmosphere-breathing marsupials. We have also the peculiar form of
the sternum and rib-bones of the lizards represented in the mammalia in
certain white cartilaginous lines traceable among their abdominal muscles.
The struphionidae (birds of

the ostrich type) form a link between birds and mammalia,
and in them we find the wings imperfectly or not at all developed, a diaphragm
and urinary sac, (organs wanting in other birds,) and feathers approaching
the nature of hair. Again, the ornithorynchus belongs to a class at the
bottom of the mammalia, and approximating to birds, and in it behold the
bill and web-feet of that order!

For further illustration, it is obvious that,
various as may be the lengths of the upper part of the vertebral column
in the mammalia, it always consists of the same parts. The giraffe has in
its tall neck the same number of bones with the pig, which scarcely appears
to have a neck at all.* Man, again, has no tail; but the notion of a much-
ridiculed philosopher of the last century is not altogether, as it happens,
without foundation, for the bones of a caudal extremity exist in an undeveloped
state in the oscoccygis of the human subject. The limbs of
all the vertebrate animals are, in like manner, on one plan, however various
they may appear. In the hind-leg of a horse, for example, the angle called
the hock is the same part which in us forms the heel; and the horse, and
all

* Danbenton established the rule, that all the viviparous
quadrupeds have seven vertebrae in the neck.

other quadrupeds, with almost the solitary exception
of the bear, walk, in reality, upon what answers to the toes of a human
being. In this and many other quadrupeds the fore part of the extremities
is shrunk up in a hoof, as the tail of the human being is shrunk up in the
bony mass at the bottom of the back. The bat, on the other hand, has these
parts largely developed. The membrane, commonly called its wing, is framed
chiefly upon bones answering precisely to those of the human hand; its extinct
congener, the pterodactyle, had the same membrane extended upon the fore-finger
only, which in that animal was prolonged to an extraordinary extent. In
the paddles of the whale and other animals of its order, we see the same
bones as in the more highly developed extremities of the land mammifers;
and even the serpent tribes, which present no external appearance of such
extremities, possess them in reality, but in an undeveloped or rudimental
state.

The same law of development presides over the
vegetable kingdom. Amongst phanerogamous plants, a certain number of organs
appear to be always present, either in a developed or rudimentary state;
and those which are rudimentary

can be developed by cultivation. The flowers which
bear stamens on one stalk and pistils on another, can be caused to produce
both, or to become perfect flowers, by having a sufficiency of nourishment
supplied to them. So also, where a special function is required for particular
circumstances, nature has provided for it, not by a new organ, but by a
modification of a common one, which she has effected in development. Thus,
for instance, some plants destined to live in arid situations, require to
have a store of water which they may slowly absorb. The need is arranged
for by a cup-like expansion round the stalk, in which water remains after
a shower. Now the pitcher, as this is called, is not a new organ,
but simply a metamorphose of a leaf.

These facts clearly shew how all the various
organic forms of our world are bound up in one- how a fundamental unity
pervades and embraces them all, collecting them, from the humblest lichen
up to the highest mammifer, in one system, the whole creation of which must
have depended upon one law or decree of the Almighty, though it did not
all come forth at on time. After what we have seen, the idea of a separate
exertion for each must appear totally inadmissible. The single fact

of abortive or rudimentary organs condemns it; for
these, on such a supposition, could be regarded in no other light than as
blemishes or blunders- the thing of all others most irreconcilable with
that idea of Almighty Perfection which a general view of nature so irresistibly
conveys. On the other hand, when the organic creation is admitted to have
been effected by a general law, we see nothing in these abortive parts but
harmless peculiarities of development, and interesting evidences of the
manner in which the Divine Author has been pleased to work.

We have yet to advert to the most interesting
class of facts connected with the laws of organic development. It is only
in recent times that physiologists have observed that each animal passes,
in the course of its germinal history, through a series of changes resembling
the permanent forms of the various orders of animals inferior to
it in the scale. Thus, for instance, an insect, standing at the head of
the articulated animals, is, in the larva state, a true annelid, or worm,
the annelida being the lowest in the same class. The embryo of a crab resembles
the perfect animal of the inferior order myriapoda, and passes through all
the forms

of transition which characterize the intermediate
tribes of crustacea. The frog, for some time after its birth, is a fish
with external gills, and other organs fitting it for an aquatic life, all
of which are changed as it advances to maturity, and becomes a land animal.
The mammifer only passes through still more stages, according to its higher
place in the scale. Nor is man himself exempt from this law. His first form
is that which is permanent in the animalcule. His organization gradually
passes through conditions generally resembling a fish, a reptile, a bird,
and the lower mammalia, before it attains its specific maturity. At one
of the last stages of his foetal career, he exhibits an intermaxillary bone,
which is characteristic of the perfect ape; this is suppressed, and he may
then be said to take leave of the simial type, and become a true human creature.
Even, as we shall see, the varieties of his race are represented in the
progressive development of an individual of the highest, before we see the
adult Caucasian, the highest point yet attained in the animal scale.

To come to particular points of the organization.
The brain of man, which exceeds that of

all other animals in complexity of organization and
fulness of development, is, at one early period, only "a simple fold of
nervous matter, with difficulty distinguishable into three parts, while
a little tail-like prolongation towards the hinder parts, and which had
been the first to appear, is the only representation of a spinal marrow.
Now, in this state it perfectly resembles the brain of an adult fish, thus
assuming in transitu the form that in the fish is permanent. In a
short time, however, the structure is become more complex, the parts more
distinct, the spinal marrow better marked; it is now the brain of a reptile.
The change continues; by a singular motion, certain parts (corpora quadragemina)
which had hitherto appeared on the upper surface, now pass towards the lower;
the former is their prmanent situation in fishes and reptiles, the latter
in birds and mammalia. This is another advance in the scale, but more remains
yet to be done. The complication of the organ increases; cavities termed ventricles are formed, which do not exist in fishes, reptiles, or
birds; curiously organized parts, such as the corpora striata, are added;
it is now the brain of the mammalia. Its last and final change alone seems
wanting, that which shall render it the

So also with the heart. This organ, in the mammalia,
consists of four cavities, but in the reptiles of only three, and in fishes
of two only, while in the articulated animals it is merely a prolonged tube.
Now in the mammal foetus, at a certain early stage, the organ has the form
of a prolonged tube; and a human being may be said to have then the heart
of an insect. Subsequently it is shortened and widened, and becomes divided
by a contraction into two parts, a ventricle and an auricle; it is now the
heart of a fish. A subdivision of the auricle afterwards makes a triple-chambered
form, as in the heart of the reptile tribes; lastly, the ventricle being
also subdivided, it becomes a full mammal heart.

Another illustration here presents itself with
the force of the most powerful and interesting analogy. Some of the earliest
fishes of our globe, those of the Old Red Sandstone, present, as we have
seen, certain peculiarities, as the one-sided tail

* Lord's Popular Physiology. It is to
Tiedemann that we chiefly owe these curious observations; but ground
was first broken in this branch of physiological science by Dr. John
Hunter.

and an inferior position of the mouth. No fishes
of the present day, in a mature state, are so characterized; but some, at
a certain stage of their existence, have such peculiarities. It occurred
to a geologist to inquire if the fish which existed before the Old Red Sandstone
had any peculiarities assimilating them to the foetal condition of existing
fish, and particularly if they were small. The first which occur before
the time of the Old Red Sandstone, are those described by Mr. Murchison,
as belonging to the Upper Ludlow Rocks; they are and rather small.
Still older are those detected by Mr. Philips, in the Aymestry Limestone,
being the most ancient of the class which have as yet been discovered; these
are so extremely minute as only to be distinguishable by the microscope.
Here we apparently have very clear demonstrations of a parity, or rather
identity, of laws presiding over the development of the animated tribes
on the face of the earth, and that of the individual in embryo.

The tendency of all these illustrations is to
make us look to development as the principle which has been immediately
concerned in the peopling of this globe, a process extending over a vast
space

of time, but which is nevertheless connected in character
with the briefer process by which an individual being is evoked from a simple
germ. What mystery is there here-and how shall I proceed to enunciate the
conception which I have ventured to form of what may prove to be its proper
solution! It is an idea by no means calculated to impress by its greatness,
or to puzzle by its profoundness. It is an idea more arked by simplicity
than perhaps any other of those which have explained the great secrets of
nature. But in this lies, perhaps, one of its strongest claims to the faith
of mankind.

The whole train of animated beings, from the
simplest and oldest up to the highest and most recent, are, then, to be
regarded as a series of advances of the principle of development,
which have depended upon external physical circumstances, to which the resulting
animals are appropriate. I contemplate the whole phenomena as having been
in the first place arranged in the counsels of Divine Wisdom, to take place,
not only upon this sphere, but upon all the others in space, under necessary
modifications, and as being carried on, from first to last, here and elsewhere,
under

immediate favour of the creative will or energy.*
The nucleated vesicle, the fundamental form of all organization, we must
regard as the meeting-point between the inorganic and the organic-the end
of the mineral and beginning of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, which
thence start in different directions, but in perfect parallelism and analogy.
We have already seen that this nucleated vesicle is itself a type of mature
and independent being in the infusory animalcules, as well as the starting
point of the foetal progress of every higher individual in creation, both
animal and vegetable. We have seen that it is a form of being which electric
agency will produce-though not perhaps usher into full life-in albumen,
one of those compound elements of animal bodies, of which another (urea)
has been made by artificial means. Remembering these things, we are drawn
on to the supposition, that the first step in the creation of life upon
this planet was a chemico-electric operation, by which

* When I formed this idea I was not
aware of one which seems faintly to foreshadow it-namely, Socrates's
doctrine, afterwards dilated on by Plato, that "previous to the existence
of the world, and beyond its present limits, there existed certain archetypes,
the embodiment (if we may use such a word) of general ideas;
and that these archetypes were models, in imitation of which all particular
beings were created."

simple germinal vesicles were produced. This
is so much, but what were the next steps? Let a common vegetable infusion
help us to an answer. There, as we have seen, simple forms are produced
at first, but afterwards they become more complicated, until at length the
life-producing powers of the infusion are exhausted. Are we to presume that,
in this case, the simple engender the complicated? Undoubtedly, this would
not be more wonderful as a natural process than one which we never think
of wondering at, because familiar to us -namely, that in the gestation of
the mammals, the animalcule-like ovum of a few days is the parent, in a
sense, of the chick-like form of a few weeks, and that in all the subsequent
stages-fish, reptile, &c.-the one may, with scarcely a metaphor, be
said to be the progenitor of the other. I suggest, then, as an hypothesis
already countenanced by much that is ascertained, and likely to be further
sanctioned by much that remains to be known, that the first step was an
advance under favour of peculiar conditions, from the simplest forms of
being, to the next more complicated, and this through the medium of the
ordinay process of generation.

Unquestionably, what we ordinarily see of nature
is calculated to impress a conviction that each

species invariably produces its like. But I would
here call attention to a remarkable illustration of natural law which has
been brought forward by Mr. Babbage, in his Ninth Bridgewater Treatise.
The reader is requested to suppose himself seated before the calculating
machine, and observing it. It is moved by a weight, and there is a wheel
which revolves through a small angle round its axis, at short intervals,
presenting to his eye successively, a series of numbers engraved on its
divided circumference.

Let the figures thus seen be the series, 1, 2,
3, 4, 5, &c., of natural numbers, each of which exceeds its immediate
antecedent by unity.

"Now, reader," says Mr. Babbage, "let me ask you
how long you will have counted before you are firmly convinced that the
engine has been so adjusted, that it will continue, while its motion is
maintained, to produce the same series of natural numbers? Some minds are
so constituted, that, after passing the first hundred terms, they will be
satisfied that they are acquainted with the law. After seeing five hundred
terms few will doubt, and after the fifty thousandth term the propensity
to believe that the succeeding term will be fifty thousand and one, will

term will be fifty thousand and one; and the same
regular succession will continue; the five millionth and the fifty millionth
term will still appear in their expected order, and one unbroken chain of
natural numbers will pass before your eyes, from one up to one
hundred million.

"True to the vast induction which has been made,
the next succeeding term will be one hundred million and one; but the next
number presented by the rim of the wheel, instead of being one hundred million
and two, is one hundred million ten thousand and two. The whole series from
the commencement being thus,-

" The law which seemed at first to govern this
series failed at the hundred million and second term. This term is larger
than we expected by 10,000. The next term is larger than was anticipated
by 30,000, and the excess of each term above what we had expected forms
the following table:—

10,000

30,000

60,000

100,000

150,000

... ...

... ...

being, in fact, the series of triangular numbers,*
each multiplied by 10,000.

* The numbers 1, 3, 6 10, 15, 21, 28,
&c. are formed by adding the successive terms of the series of natural
numbers thus:

" If we now continue to observe the numbers presented
by the wheel, we shall find, that for a hundred, or even for a thousand
terms, they continue to follow the new law relating to the tri- angular
numbers; but after watching them for 2761 terms, we find that this law fails
in the case of the 2762d term.

" If we continue to observe, we shall discover
another law then coming into action, which also is dependent, but in a different
manner, on triangular numbers. This will continue through about 1430 terms,
when a new law is again introduced which extends over about 950 terms, and
this, too, like all its predecessors, fails, and gives place to other laws,
which appear at different intervals.

" Now it must be observed that the law that
each number presented by the engine is greater by unity than the preceding
number, which law the observer had deduced from an induction of a hundred
million instances, was not the true law that regulated its action,
and that the occurrence of the number triangular numbers, because a number
of points corresponding to any term can always be placed in the form of
a triangle; for instance-

100,010,002 at the 100,000,002nd term was as necessary
a consequence of the original adjustment, and might have been as fully foreknown
at the commencement, as was the regular succession of any one of the intermediate
numbers to its immediate antecedent. The same remark applies to the
next apparent deviation from the new law, which was founded on an induction
of 2761 terms, and also to the succeeding law, with this limitation only-
that, whilst their consecutive introduction at various definite intervals,
is a necessary consequence of the mechanical structure of the engine, our
knowledge of analysis does not enable us to predict the periods themselves
at which the more distant laws will be introduced."

It is not difficult to apply the philosophy of
this passage to the question under consideration. It must be borne in mind
that the gestation of a single organism is the work of but a few days, weeks,
or months; but the gestation (so to speak) of a whole creation is a matter
probably involving enormous spaces of time. Suppose that an ephemeron, hovering
over a pool for its one April day of life, were capable of observing the
fry of the frog in the water below. In its aged afternoon, having seen no
change upon them for such a long

time, it would be little qualified to conceive that
the external branchiae of these creatures were to decay, and be replaced
by internal lungs, that feet were to be developed, the tail erased, and
the animal then to become a denizen of the land. Precisely such may be our
difficulty in conceiving that any of the species which people our earth
is capable of advancing by generation to a higher type of being. During
the whole time which we call the historical era, the limits of species have
been, to ordinary observation, rigidly adhered to. But the historical era
is, we know, only a small portion of the entire age of our globe. We do
not know what may have happened during the ages which preceded its commencement,
as we do not know what may happen in ages yet in the distant future. All,
therefore, that we can properly infer from the apparently invariable production
of like by like is, that such is the ordinary procedure of nature in the
time immediately passing before our eyes. Mr. Babbage's illustration powerfully
suggests that this ordinary procedure may be subordinate to a higher law
which only permits it for a time, and in proper season interrupts
and changes it. We shall soon see some philosophical evidence for this very
conclusion.

It has been seen that, in the reproduction of
the higher animals, the new being passes through stages in which it is successively
fish-like and reptile-like. But the resemblance is not to the adult fish
or the adult reptile, but to the fish and reptile at a certain point in
their foetal progress; this holds true with regard to the vascular, nervous,
and other systems alike. It may be illustrated by a simple diagram. The
foetus of all the four classes may be supposed to advance in an identical
condition to the point A. The fish there diverges and passes along a line
apart, and peculiar to itself, to its mature state at F. The reptile, bird,
and mammal, go on together to C, where the reptile diverges in like manner,
A and advances by itself to R. The bird diverges at D, and goes on to B.
The mammal then goes forward in a straight line to the highest point of
organization at M. This diagram shews only the main ramifications; but the
reader must suppose minor ones, representing the subordinate differences
of orders, tribes, families, genera, &c., if he wishes to extend his
views to the whole varieties of being in the animal

kingdom. Limiting ourselves at present to the outline
afforded by this diagram, it is apparent that the only thing required for
an advance from one type to another in the generative process is that, for
example, the fish embryo should not diverge at A, but go on to C before
it diverges, in which case the progeny will be, not a fish, but a reptile.
To protract the straightforward part of the gestation over a small space-and
from species to species the space would be small indeed-is all that is necessary.

This might be done by the force of certain external
conditions operating upon the parturient system. The nature of these conditions
we can only conjecture, for their operation, which in the geological eras
was so powerful, has in its main strength been long interrupted, and is
now perhaps only allowed to work in some of the lowest departments of the
organic world, or under extraordinary casualties in some of the higher,
and to these points the attention of science has as yet been little directed.
But though this knowledge were never to be clearly attained, it need not
much affect the present argument, provided it be satisfactorily shewn that
there must be some such influence within the range of natural things.

To this conclusion it must be greatly conducive
that the law of organic development is still daily seen at work to certain
effects, only somewhat short of a transition from species to species. Sex
we have seen to be a matter ofdevelopment. There is an instance, in a humble
department of the animal world, of arrangements being made by the animals
themselves for adjusting this law to the production of a particular sex.
Amongst bees, as amongst several other insect tribes, there is in each community
but one true female, the queen bee, the workers being false females or neuters;
that is to say, sex is carried on in them to a point where it is attended
by sterility. The preparatory states of the queen bee occupy sixteen days;
those of the neuters, twenty; and those of males, twenty-four. Now it is
a fact, settled by innumerable observations and experiments, that the bees
can so modify a worker in the larva state, that, when it emerges from the
pupa, it is found to be a queen or true female. For this purpose they enlarge
its cell, make a pyramidal hollow to allow of its assuming a vertical instead
of a horizontal position, keep it warmer than other larv are kept,
and feed it with a peculiar kind of food. From these simple circumstances,
leading to a shortening of the embry-

otic condition, results a creature different in form,
and also in dispositions, from what would have otherwise been produced.
Some of the organs possessed by the worker are here altogether wanting.
We have a creature "destined to enjoy love, to burn with jealousy and anger,
to be incited to vengeance, and to pass her time without labour," instead
of one "zealous for the good of the community, a defender of the public
rights, enjoying an immunity from the stimulus of sexual appetite and the
pains of parturition; laborious, industrious, patient, ingenious, skilful;
incessantly engaged in the nurture of the young, in collecting honey and
pollen, in elaborating wax, in constructing cells and the like!-paying the
most respectful and assiduous attention to objects which, had its ovaries
been developed, it would have hated and pursued with the most vindictive
fury till it had destroyed them !"* All these changes may be produced by
a mere modification of the embryotic progress, which it is within the power
of the adult animals to effect. But it is important to observe that this
modification is different from working a direct change upon the embryo.
It is

not the different food which effects a metamorphosis.
All that is done is merely to accelerate the period of the insect's perfection.
By the arrangements made and the food given, the embryo becomes sooner fit
for being ushered forth in its image or perfect state. Development may be
said to be thus arrested at a particular stage-that early one at which the
female sex is complete. In the other circumstances, it is allowed to go
on four days longer, and a stage is then reached between the two sexes,
which in this species is designed to be the perfect condition of a large
portion of the community. Four days more make it a perfect male. It is at
the same time to be observed that there is, from the period of oviposition,
a destined distinction between the sexes of the young bees. The queen lays
the whole of the eggs which are designed to become workers, before she begins
to lay those which become males. But probably the condition of her reproductive
system governs the matter of sex, for it is remarked that when her impregnation
is delayed beyond the twenty-eighth day of her entire existence, she lays
only eggs which become males.

We have here, it will be admitted, a most remarkable
illustration of the principle of develop-

ment, although in an operation limited to the production
of sex only. Let it not be said that the phenomena concerned in the generation
of bees may be very different from those concerned in the reproduction of
the higher animals. There is a unity throughout nature which makes the one
case an instructive reflection of the other.

We shall now see an instance of development operating
within the production of what approaches to the character of variety of
species. It is fully established that a human family, tribe, or nation,
is liable, in the course of generations, to be either advanced from a mean
form to a higher one, or degraded from a higher to a lower, by the influence
of the physical conditions in which it lives. The coarse features, and other
structural peculiarities of the negro race only continue while these people
live amidst the circumstances usually associated with barbarism. In a more
temperate clime, and higher racial state, the face and figure become greatly
refined. The few African nations which possess any civilization also exhibit
forms approaching the European; and when the same people in the United States
of America have enjoyed a within- door life for several generations, they
assimilate to the whites amongst whom they live. On the other

hand, there are authentic instances of a people originally
well-formed and good-looking, being brought, by imperfect diet and a variety
of physical hardships, to a meaner form. It is remarkable that prominence
of the jaws, a recession and diminution of the cranium, and an elongation
and attenuation of the limbs, are peculiarities always produced by these
miserable conditions, for they indicate an unequivocal retrogression towards
the type of the lower animals. Thus we see nature alike willing to go back
and to go forward. Both effects are simply the result of the operation of
the law of development in the generative system. Give good conditions, it
advances; bad ones, it recedes. Now, perhaps, it is only because there is
no longer a possibility, in the higher types of being, of giving sufficiently
favourable conditions to carry on species to species, that we see the operation
of the law so far limited.

Let us trace this law also in the production
of certain classes of monstrosities. A human foetus is often left with one
of the most important parts of its frame imperfectly developed: the heart,
for instance, goes no farther than the three-chambered form, so that it
is the heart of a reptile. There are even instances of this organ being
left in the

two-chambered or fish form. Such defects are the
result of nothing more than a failure of the power of development in the
system of the mother, occasioned by weak health or misery. Here we have
apparently a realization of the converse of those conditions which carry
on species to species, so far, at least, as one organ is concerned. Seeing
a complete specific retrogression in this one point, how easy it is to imagine
an access of favourable conditions sufficient to reverse the phenomenon,
and make a fish mother develop a reptile heart, or a reptile mother develop
a mammal one. It is no great boldness to surmise that a super-adequacy in
the measure of this under-adequacy (and the one thing seemsas natural an
occurrence as the other) would suffice in a goose to give its progeny the
body of a rat, and produce the ornithorynchus, or might give the progeny
of an ornithorynchus the mouth and feet of a true rodent, and thus complete
at two stages the passage from the aves to the mammalia.

Perhaps even the transition from species to species
does still take place in some of the obscurer fields of creation, or under
extraordinary casualties, though science professes to have no such facts
on record. It is here to be remarked, that such facts

might often happen, and yet no record be taken of
them, for so strong is the prepossession for the doctrine of invariable
like-production, that such circumstances, on occurring, would be almost
sure to be explained away on some other supposition, or, if presented, would
be disbelieved and neglected. Science, therefore, has no such facts, for
the very same reason that some small sects are said to have no discreditable
members-namely, that they do not receive such persons, and extrude all who
begin to verge upon the character There are, nevertheless, some facts which
have chanced to be reported without any reference to this hypothesis, and
which it seems extremely difficult to explain satisfactorily upon any other.
One of these has already been mentioned-a progression in the forms of the
animalcules in a vegetable infusion from the simpler to the more complicated,
a sort of microcosm, representing the whole history of the progress of animal
creation as displayed by geology. Another is given in the history of the
Acarus Crossii which may be only the ultimate stage of a series of similar
transformations effected by electric agency in the solution subjected to
it. There is, however, one direct case of a translation of species, which
has been presented with a respect-

able amount of authority.* It appears that, whenever
oats sown at the usual time are kept cropped down during summer and autumn,
and allowed to remain over the winter, a thin crop of rye is the harvest
presented at the close of the ensuing summer. This experiment has been tried
repeatedly, with but one result; invariably the secale cereale is
the crop reaped where the avena sativa, a recognised different species,
was sown. Now it will not satisfy a strict inquirer to be told that the
seeds of the rye were latent in the ground and only superseded the dead
product of the oats; for if any such fact were in the case, why should the
usurping grain be always rye? Perhaps those curious facts which have been
stated with regard to forests of one kind of trees, when burnt down, being
succeeded (without planting) by other kinds, may yet be found most explicable,
as this is, upon the hypothesis of a progression of species which takes
place under certain favouring conditions, now apparently of comparatively
rare occurrence. The case of the oats is the more valuable, as bearing upon
the suggestion as to a protraction of the gestation at a particular part
of its course. Here,

* See an article by Dr. Weissenborn,
in the New Series of "Magazine of Natural History," vol. i. p. 574.

the generative process is, by the simple mode of
cropping down, kept up for a whole year beyond its usual term. The type
is thus allowed to advance, and what was oats becomes rye.

The idea, then, which I form of the progress
of organic life upon the globe-and the hypothesis is applicable to all similar
theatres of vital being-is, that the simplest and most primitive type,
under a law to which that of like-production is subordinate, gave birth
to the type next above it, that this again produced the next higher, and
so on to the very highest, the stages of advance being in all cases
very small- namely, from one species only to another; so that the phenomenon
has always been of a simple and modest character. Whether the whole of any
species was at once translated forward, or only a few parents were employed
to give birth to the new type, must remain undetermined; but, supposing
that the former was the case, we must presume that the moves along the line
or lines were simultaneous, so that the place vacated by one species was
immediately taken by the next in succession, and so on back to the first,
for the supply of which the foundation of a new germinal vesicle out of
inorganic matter was alone necessary. Thus, the production of new forms,
as shewn in

the pages of the geological record, has never been
anything more than a new stage of progress in gestation, an event as simply
natural, and attended as little by any circumstances of a wonderful or startling
kind, as the silent advance of an ordinary mother from one week to another
of her pregnancy. Yet, be it remembered, the whole phenomena are, in another
point of view, wonders of the highest kind, for in each of them we have
to trace the effect of an Almighty Will which had arranged the whole in
such harmony with external physical circumstances, that both were developed
in parallel steps-and probably this development upon our planet is but a
sample of what has taken place, through the same cause, in all the other
countless theatres of being which are suspended in space.

This may be the proper place at which to introduce
the preceding illustrations in a form calculated to bring them more forcibly
before the mind of the reader. The following table was suggested to me,
in consequence of seeing the scale of animated nature presented in Dr. Fletcher's
Rudiments of Physiology. Taking that scale as its basis, it shews the wonderful
parity observed in the progress of creation, as presented to our observation
in the succession of fossils, and also in the

foetal progress of one of the principal human organs.*
This scale, it may be remarked, was not made up with a view to support such
an hypothesis as the present, nor with any apparent regard to the history
of fossils, but merely to express the appearance of advancement in the orders
of the Cuvierian system, assuming, as the criterion of that advancement,
"an increase in the number and extent of the manifestations of life, or
of the relations which an organized being bears to the external world."
Excepting in the relative situation of the annelida and a few of the mammal

* "It is a fact of the highest interest
and moment that as the brain of every tribe of animals appears to pass,
during its development, in succession through the types of all those
below it, so the brain of man passes through the types of those of every
tribe in the creation. It represents, accordingly, before the second
month of gestation, that of an avertebrated animal; at the second month,
that of anosseous fish; at the third, that of a turtle; at the fourth,
that of a bird; at the fifth, that of one of the rodentia; By the sixth,
that of one of the ruminantia; at the seventh, that of one of the digitigrada;
at the eighth, that of one of the quadrennana; till at length, at the
ninth, it compasses the brain of man! It is hardly necessary to say,
that all this is only an approximation to the truth; since neither is
the brain of all osseous fishes, of all turtles, of all birds, nor of
all the species of any one of the above order of mammals, by any means
precisely the same, nor does the brain of the human foetus at any time
precisely resemble, perhaps, that of any individual whatever among the
lower animate. Nevertheless, it may be said to represent, at each of

perfect; nor may even these small discrepancies appear
when the order of fossils shall have been further investigated, or a more
correct scale shall have been formed. Meanwhile, it is a wonderful evidence
in favour of our hypothesis, that a scale formed so arbitrarily should coincide
to such a nearness with our present knowledge of the succession of animal
forms upon earth, and also that both of these series should harmonize so
well with the view given by modern physiologists of the embryotic progress
of one of the organs of the highest order of animals

of the brains of each of the tribes
stated; consisting as it does, about the second month, chiefly of the
mesial parts of the cerebellum, the corpora quadrigemina, thalami optic),
rudiments of the hemispheres of the cerebrum and corpora striate; and
receiving in succession, at the third, the rudiments of the lobes of
the cerebrom; at the fourth, those of the fornix, corpus callosum, and
septum lucidum; at the fifth, the tubor annulare, and so forth; the
posterior lobes of the cerebrum increasing from before to behind, so
as to cover the thalami optici about the fourth month, the corpora quadrigemina
about the sixth, and the cerebellum about the seventh. This, then, is
another example of an increase in the complexity of an organ succeeding
its centralization; as if Nature, having first piled up her materials
in one spot, delighted afterwards to employ her abundance, not so much
in enlarging old parts as in forming new ones upon the old foundations,
and thus adding to the complexity of a fabric, the rudimental structure
of which is in an animals equally simple."-Fletcher's Rudiments of
Physiology.

The reader has seen physical conditions several
times referred to, as to be presumed to have in some way governed the progress
of the development of the zoological circle. This language may seem vague,
and, it may be asked,-can any particular physical condition be adduced as
likely to have affected development? To this it may be answered, that air
and light are probably amongst the principal agencies of this kind which
operated in educing the various forms of being. Light is found to be essential
to the development of the individual embryo. When tadpoles were placed in
a perforated box, and that box sunk in the Seine, light being the only condition
thus abstracted, they grew to a great size in their original form, but did
not pass through the usual metamorphose which brings them to their mature
state as frogs. The proteus, an animal of the frog kind, inhabiting the
subterraneous waters of Carniola, and which never acquires perfect lungs
so as to become a land animal, is presumed to be an example of arrested
development, from the same cause. When, in connexion with these facts, we
learn that human mothers living in dark and close cells under ground,-that
is to say, with an inadequate provision of air and light,-are found to

produce an unusual proportion of defective children,*
We can appreciate the important effects of both these physical conditions
in ordinary reproduction. Now there is nothing to forbid the supposition
that the earth has been at different stages of its career under different
conditions, as to both air and ligh. On the contrary, we have seen reason
for supposing that the proportion of carbonic acid gas (the element fatal
to animal life) was larger at the time of the carboniferous formation than
it afterwards became. We have also seen that astronomers regard the zodiacal
light as a residuum of matter enveloping the sun, and which was probably
at one time denser than it is now. Here we have the indications of causes
for a progress in the purification of the atmosphere and in the diffusion
of light during the earlier ages of the earth's history, with which the
progress of organic life may have been conformable. An accession to the
proportion of oxygen, and the effulgence of the central luminary, may have
been the immediate prompting cause of all those advances from

* Some poor people having taken up their
abode in the cells under the fortifications of Lisle, the proportion
of defective infants produced by them became so great, that it was deemed
necessary to issue an order commanding these cells to be shut up.

species to species which we have seen, upon other
grounds, to be necessarily supposed as having taken place. And causes of
the like nature may well be supposed to operate on other spheres of being,
as well as on this. I do not indeed present these ideas as furnishing the
true explanation of the progress of organic creation, they are merely thrown
out as hints towards the formation of a just hypothesis, the completion
of which is only to be looked for when some considerable advances shall
have been made in the amount and character of our stock of knowledge.

Early in this century, M. Lamarck, a naturalist
of the highest character, suggested an hypothesis of organic progress which
deservedly incurred much ridicule, although it contained a glimmer of the
truth. He surmised, and endeavoured, with a great deal of ingenuity, to
prove, that one being advanced in the course of generations to another,
in consequence merely of its experience of wants calling for the exercise
of its faculties in a particular direction, by which exercise new developments
of organs took place, ending in variations sufficient to constitute a new
species. Thus he thought that a bird would be driven by necessity to seek
its food in the water, and that, in its

efforts to swim, the outstretching of its claws would
lead to the expansion of the intermediate membranes, and it would thus become
web-footed. Now it is possible that wants and the exercise of faculties
have entered in some manner into the production of the phenomena which we
have been considering; but certainly not in the way suggested by Lamarck,
whose whole notion is obviously so inadequate to account for the rise of
the organic kingdoms, that we only can place it with pity among the follies
of the wise. Had the laws of organic development been known in his time,
his theory might have been of a more imposing kind. It is upon these that
the present hypothesis is mainly founded. I take existing natural means,
and shew them to have been capable of producing all the existing organisms,
with the simple and easily conceivable aid of a higher generative law, which
we perhaps still see operating upon a limited scale. I also go beyond the
French philosopher to a very important point, the original Divine conception
of all the forms of being which these natural laws were only instruments
in working out and realizing. The actuality of uch a conception I hold
to be strikingly demonstrated by the discoveries of Macleay, Vigors, and
Swainson, with re-

spect to the affinities and analogies of animal (and
by implication vegetable) organisms.* Such a regularity in the structure,
as we may call it, of the classification of animals, as is shewn
in their systems, is totally irreconcilable with the idea of form going
on to form merely as needs and wishes in the animals themselves dictated.
Had such been the case, all would have been irregular, as things arbitrary
necessarily are. But, lo, the whole plan of being is as symmetrical as the
plan of a house, or the laying out of an old-fashioned garden! This must
needs have been devised and arranged for beforehand. And what a preconception
or forethought have we here! Let us only for a moment consider how various
are the external physical conditions in which animals live-climate, soil,
temperature, land, water, air-the peculiarities of food, and the various
ways in which it is to be sought; the peculiar circumstances in which the
business of reproduction and the care-taking of the young are to be attended
to-all these required to be taken into account, and thousands of animals
were to be formed suitable in organization and mental character for the
concerns they were to have with

these various conditions and circumstances-here a
tooth fitted for crushing nuts; there a claw fitted to serve as a hook for
suspension; here to repress teeth and develop a bony net-work instead; there
to arrange for a bronchial apparatus, to last only for a certain brief time;
and all these animals were to be schemed out, each as a part of a great
range, which was on the whole to be rigidly regular: let us, I say, only
consider these things, and we shall see that the decreeing of laws to bring
the whole about was an act involving such a degree of wisdom and device
as we only can attribute, adoringly, to the one Eternal and Unchangeable.
It may be asked, how does this reflection comport with that timid philosophy
which would have us to draw back from the investigation of God's works,
lest the knowledge of them should make us undervalue his greatness and forget
his paternal character? Does it not rather appear that our ideas of the
Deity can only be worthy of him in the ratio in which we advance in a knowledge
of his works and ways; and that the acquisition of this knowledge is consequently
an available means of our growing in a genuine reverence for him !

But the idea that any of the lower animals have
been concerned in any way with the origin of

man-is not this degrading? Degrading is a term,
expressive of a notion of the human mind, and the human mind is liable to
prejudices which prevent its notions from being invariably correct. Were
we acquainted for the first time with the circumstances attending the production
of an individual of our race, we might equally think them degrading, and
be eager to deny them, and exclude them from the admitted truths of nature.
Knowing this fact familiarly and beyond contradiction, a healthy and natural
mind finds no difficulty in regarding it complacently. Creative Providence
has been pleased to order that it should be so, and it must therefore be
submitted to Now the idea as to the progress of organic creation, if we
become satisfied of its truth, ought to be received precisely in this spirit.
It has pleased Providence to arrange that one species should give birth
to another, until the second highest gave birth to man, who is the very
highest: be it so, it is our part to admire and to submit. The very faintest
notion of there being anything ridiculous or degrading in the theory-how
absurd does it appear, when we remember that every individual amongst us
actually passes through the characters of the insect, the fish, and reptile,
(to speak nothing of others,) before he

is permitted to breathe the breath of life! But
such notions are mere emanations of false pride and ignorant prejudice.
He who conceives them little reflects that they, in reality, involve the
principle of a contempt for the works and ways of God, For it may be asked,
if He, as appears, has chosen to employ inferior organisms as a generative
medium for the production of higher ones, even including ourselves, what
right have we,-his humble creatures, to find fault? There is, also, in this
prejudice, an element of unkindliness towards the lower animals, which is
utterly out of place. These creatures are all of them part products of the
Almighty Conception, as well as ourselves. All of them display wondrous
evidences of his wisdom and benevolence. All of them have had assigned to
them by their Great Father a part in the drama of the organic world, as
well as ourselves. Why should they be held in such contempt? Let us regard
them in a proper spirit, as parts of the grand plan, instead of contemplating
them in the light of frivolous prejudices, and we shall be altogether at
a loss to see how there should be any degradation in the idea of our race
having been genealogically connected with them.

MACLEAY SYSTEM
OF ANIMATED NATURE.

THIS SYSTEM CONSIDERED IN CONNEXION
WITH THE

PROGRESS OF ORGANIC CREATION, AND
AS INDICATING THE NATURAL STATUS OF MAN.

______

IT is now high time to advert to the system formed
by the animated tribes, both with a view to the possible illustration of
the preceding argument, and for the light which it throws upon that general
system of nature which it is the more comprehensive object of this book
to ascertain.

The vegetable and animal kingdoms are arranged
upon a scale, starting from simply organized forms, and going on to the
more complex, each of these forms being but slightly different from those
next to it on both sides. The lowest and most slightly

developed forms in the two kingdoms are so closely
connected, that it is impossible to say where vegetable ends and animal
begins. United at what may be called their bases, they start away in different
directions, but not altogether to lose sight of each other. On the contrary,
they maintain a strict analogy throughout the whole of their subsequent
courses, sub-kingdom for sub-kingdom, class for class; shewing a beautiful,
though as yet obscure relation between the two grand forms of being, and
consequently a unity in the laws which brought them both into existence.
So complete does this analogy appear, even in the present imperfect state
of science, that I fully expect in a few years to see the animal and vegetable
kingdoms duly rnked up against each other in a system of parallels, which
will admit of our assigning to each species in the former the particular
shrub or tree corresponding to it in the latter, all marked by unmistakable
analogies of the most interesting kind.

It is as yet but a few years since a system of
subordinate analogies not less remarkable began to be speculated upon as
within the range of the animal kingdom. Probably it also exists in the vegetable
kingdom; but to this point no direct

attention has been given; so we are left to infer
that such is the case from theoretical considerations only. We are indebted
for what we know of these beautiful analogies to three naturalists-Macleay,
Vigors, and Swainson, whose labours tempt us to dismiss in a great measure
the artificial classifications hitherto used, and make an entirely new conspectus
of the animal kingdom, not to speak of the corresponding reform which will
be required in our systems of botany also.

The Macleay system, as it may be called in honour
of its principal author, announces that, whether we take the whole animal
kingdom, or any definite division of it, we shall find that we are examining
a group of beings which is capable of being arranged along a series of close
affinities, in a circular form,-that is to say, starting from any
one portion of the group, when it is properly arranged, we can proceed from
one to another by minute gradations, till at length, having run through
the whole, we return to the point whence we set out. All natural groups
of animals are, therefore, in the language of Mr. Macleay, circular;
and the possibility of throwing any supposed group into a circular arrangement
is held as a decisive test of its being a real or natural one. It is of
course to

be understood that each circle is composed of a set
of inferior circles: for example, a set of tribe circles composes
an order; a set of order circles, again, forms a class;
and so on. Of each group, the component circles are invariably five in
number: thus, in the animal kingdom, there are five subkingdoms, -the
vertebrata, annulosa,* radiate, acrita, mollusca. Take, again, one of these
sub- kingdoms, the vertebrata, and we find it composed of five classes,
-the mammalia, reptilia, pisces, amphibia, and aves, each of the other sub-kingdoms
being similarly divisible. Take the mammalia, and it is in like manner found
to be composed of five orders, -the cheirotheria,憇 fer, cetacea,
glires, ungulata. Even in this numerical uniformity, which goes down to
the lowest ramifications of the system, there would be something very remarkable,
as arguing a definite and preconceived arrangement; but this is only the
least curious part of the Macleay theory.

We shall best understand the wonderfully com-

* Corresponding to the articulata of
Cuvier.

A new sub-kingdom, made out of part
of the radiata of Cuvier.

憇 This is a newly applied term, the
reasons for which will be explained in the sequel.

pies system of analogies developed by that theory,
if we start from the part of the kingdom in which they were first traced,-namely,
the class aves, or birds. This gives for its five orders,-incessores,
(perching birds,) raptores, (birds of prey,) natatores, (swimming
birds,) grallatores, (waders,) rasores, (scrapers.) In these
orders our naturalists discerned distinct organic characters, of different
degrees of perfectness, the first being the most perfect with regard to
the general character of the class, and therefore the best representative
of that class; whence it was called the typical order. The second
was found to be inferior, or rather to have a less perfect balance of qualities;
hence it was designated the sub-typical. In this are comprehended
the chief noxious and destructive animals of the circle to which it belongs.
The other three groups were called aberrant, as exhibiting a much wider
departure from the typical standard, although the last of the three is observed
to make a certain recovery, and join on to the typical group, so as to complete
the circle. The first of the aberrant groups (natatores) is remarkable for
making the water the theatre of its existence, and the birds composing it
are in general of comparatively large bulk. The second (grallatores) are

long-limbed and long-billed, that they may wade and
pick up their subsistence in the shallows and marshes in which they chiefly
live. The third (rasores) are distinguished by strong feet, for walking
or running on the ground, and for scraping in it for their food, also by
wings designed to scarcely raise them off the earth; and, farther, by a
general domesticity of character and usefulness to man.

Now the most remarkable circumstance is, that
these organic characters, habits, and moral properties, were found to be
traceable more or less distinctly in the corresponding portions of every
other group, even of those belonging to distant subdivisions of the animal
kingdom, as, for instance, the insects. The incessores (typical order of
aves) being reduced to its constituent circles or tribes, it was found that
these strictly represented the five orders. In the conirostres are
the perfections which belong to the incessores as an order, with the conspicuous
external feature of a comparatively small notch in their bills; in the dentirostres,
the notch is strong and toothlike, (hence the name of the tribe) assimilating
them to the raptores; the fissirostres come into analogy with the natatores in the slight development of their feet and their great
powers of flight; the tenuirostres have the

small mouths and long soft bills of the grallatores.
Finally, the scansores resemble the rasores in their superior intelligence
and docility, and in their having strong limbs and a bill entire at the
tip. This parity of qualities becomes clearer when placed in a tabular form:—

Orders of Birds. Characters. Tribes of
Incessores.

Incessores - { Most perfect of their circle; Conirostres

notch of bill small }

Raptores - Notch of bill like a tooth - Dentirostres.

Natatores -{Slightly developed feet; Fissirostres.

strong flight - - - - }

Grallatores - Small months; long soft bills Tenuirostres.

Rasores - - {Strong feet, short wings;

docile and domestic- - } Scansores.

Some comprehensive terms are much wanted to describe
these five characters, so curiously repeated throughout the whole of the
animal, and probably also the vegetable kingdom. Meanwhile, Mr. Swainson
calls them typical, sub-typial, natatorial, suctorial,* and rasorial. Some
of his illustrations of the principle are exceedingly interesting. He shews
that the leading animal of a typical circle usually has a combination of
properties concen-

* This is preferred to grallatorial,
as more comprehensively descriptive. There is the same need for a substitute
for rasorial, which is only applicable to birds.

trated in itself, without any of these preponderating
remarkably over others. The sub-typical circles, he says, "do not comprise
the largest individuals in bulk, but always those which are the most powerfully
armed, either for inflicting injury on their own class, for exciting terror,
producing injury, or creating annoyance to man. Their dispositions are often
sanguinary, since the forms most conspicuous among them live by rapine,
and subsist on the blood of other animals. They are, in short, symbolically
types of evil." This symbolical character is most conspicuous about
the centre of the series of gradations:—

Kingdom . . Annulosa.

Sub-kingdom ....Reptilia.

Class (Mammalia) Fer.

(Aves) . . . .Raptores.

In the annulosa it is not distinct, although we must
also remember that insects do produce enormous ravages and annoyance in
many parts of the earth. In the reptilia it is more distinct, since to this
class belong the ophidia, (serpents,) an order peculiarly noxious. It comes
to a kind of climax in the fer and raptores, which fulfil the function
of butchers among land animals. As we descend

through tribes, families, genera, species, it becomes
fainter and fainter, but never altogether vanishes. In the dentirostres,
for instance, we have in a subdued form the hooked bill and predaceous character
of the raptores; to this tribe belongs the family of the shrikes, so deadly
to all the lesser field birds. In the genus bos, we have, in the sub-typical
group, the bison, "wild, revengeful, and shewing an innate detestation
of man.," In equus, we have, in the same situation, the zebra, which actually
shews the stripes of the tiger, and is as remarkable for its wildness as
its congeners, the horse and ass, are for their docility and usefulness.
To quote again from Mr. Swainson, "the singular threatening aspect which
the caterpillars of the sphinx moth assume on being disturbed, is a remarkable
modification of the terrific or evil nature which is impressed in one form
or another, palpable or remote, upon all sub-typical groups; for this division
of the lepidopterous order is precisely of this denomination. In the pre-eminent
type of this order of insects, the butterflies, (papilionides,) our associations
little prepare us for expecting any trace of the evil principle; but here,
too, there is a sub-typical division. These," says our naturalist,- "are

being armed with formidable spines or prickles, which
in general are possessed of some highly acrimonious or poisonous quality,
capable of injuring those who touch them. It is only," continues Mr. Swainson,
"when extensive researches bring to light a uniformity of results, that
we can venture to believe they are so universal as to deserve being ranked
as primary laws. Thus, when a celebrated entomologist denounced as impure
the black and lurid beetles forming the saprophagous petalocera of Mr. Macleay,
a tribe living only upon putrid vegetable matter, and hiding themselves
in their disgusting food, or in dark hollows of the earth, neither of these
celebrated men suspected the absolute fact, elicited from our analogies
of this group, that this very tribe constituted the sub- typical group of
one of the primary divisions of coleopterous insects: nor had they any suspicion
that, by the filthy habits and repulsive forms of these beetles, nature
had intended that they should be types or emblems of hundreds of other groups,
distinguished by peculiarities equally indicative of evil. On the other
hand, the thalerophagous petalocera, forming the typical group of the Hame
division, present us with all the perfections and habits belonging to their

of beetles live only upon fresh vegetables; they
are diurnal, and sport in the glare of day, pure in their food, elegant
in their shapes, and beautiful in their colours."*

The third type, (first of the three aberrant,)
called by Mr. Swainson, the natatorial, or aquatic, are chiefly remarkable
for their bulk, the disproportionate size of the head, and the absence,
or slight development of the feet. They partake of the predaceous and destructive
character of the adjoining sub-typical group, and the means of their predacity
are generally found in the mouth alone. In the primary division of the animal
kingdom, we find the type in the radiate, not one of which lives out of
water. In the vertebrate, it is in the fishes. In both of these, feet are
totally wanting. Descending to the class mammalia, we have this type in
the cetacea, which present a comparatively slight development of limbs.
In the aves, as we have seen, the type is presented in the natatores, whose
name has been adopted as an appropriate term for all the corresponding groups.
An enumeration of some other examples of the natatorial type, as the cephalopoda
(instanced in

the cuttle-fish) in the mollusca; the crustacea (crabs,
&c.) in the annulosa; the owls (which often duck for fish) in
the raptores; the ichthyosaurus, plesiosaurus, &c., among reptilia,
will serve to bring the general character, and its pervasion of the whole
animal world, forcibly before the mind of the reader.

The next type is that of meanest and most imperfect
organization, the lower termination of all groups, as the typical is the
upper. It is called by Mr. Swainson the suctorial, from a very generally
prevalent peculiarity, that of drawing sustenance by suction. The acrita,
or polypes, among the sub-kingdoms; the intestine, among the annulosa; the
tortoises, among the reptilia; the armadillo and scaly ant- eater, pig,
mouse, jerboa, and kangaroo, among quadrupeds; the waders and tenuirostres,
among birds; the coleoptera, (bug, louse, flea, &c.) among insects;
the gastrobranchus, among fishes; are examples which will illustrate the
special characters of this type. These are smallness, particularly in the
head and mouth, feebleness, and want of offensive protection, defect of
organs of mastication, considerable powers of swift movement, and (often)
a parasitic mode of living; while of negative qualities, there are, be-

sides, indisposition to domestication, and an unsuitableness
to srve as human food.

The rasorial type comprehends most of the animals
which become domesticated and useful to man, as, first, the fowls which
give a name to the type, the ungulate, and more particularly the ruminantia,
among quadrupeds, and the dog among the fer. Gentleness, familiarity
with man, and a peculiar approach to human intelligence, are the leading
mental characteristics of animals of this type. Amongst external characters,
we generally find power of limbs and feet for locomotion on land, (to which
the rasorial type is confined,) abundant tail and ornaments for the head,
whether in the form of tufts, crests, horns, or bony excrescences. In the
animal kingdom, the mollusca are the rasorial type, which, however, only
shews itself there in their soft and sluggish character, and their being
very generally edible. In the ptilota, or winged insects, the hymenopterous
are the rasorial type, and it is not therefore surprising to find amongst
them the ants and bees, "the most social, intelligent, and in the latter
"

As yet the speculations on representation are
imperfect, in consequence of the novelty of the

doctrine, and the defective state of our knowledge
of animated nature. It has, however, been so fully proved in the aves, and
traced so clearly in other parts of the animal kingdom, and as a general
feature of that part of nature, that hardly a doubt can exist of its being
universally applicable. Even in the lowly forms of the acrita, (polypes,)
the suctorial type of the animal kingdom, representation has been discerned,
and with some remarkable results as to the history of our world. The acrita
were the first forms of animal life upon earth, the starting point of that
great branch of organization. Now, this sub-kingdom consists, like the rest,
of five groups, (classes,) and these are respectively representations of
the acrita itself, and the other four sub-kingdoms, which had not come into
existence when the acrita were formed. The polypi vaginati, in the crustaceous
covering of the living mass, and their more or less articulated structure,
represent the annulosa. In the radiated forms of the rotifera,
and the simple structure of the polpi rudes, we are reminded of the radiata.
The mollusca are typified in the soft, mucous, sluggish intestine.
And, finally, in the fleshy living mass which surrounds the bony and hollow
axis of the polypi natantes, we have a sketch of the vertebrata.

The aclita thus appear as a prophecy of the higher
events of animal development. They shew that the nobler orders of being,
including man himself, were contemplated from the first, and came into existence
by virtue of a law, the operation of which had commenced ages before their
forms were realized.

The system of representation is therefore to
be regarded as a powerful additional proof of the hypothesis of organic
progress by virtue of law. It establishes the unity of animated nature
and the definite character of its entire constitution. It enables us to
see how, under the flowing robes of nature, where all looks arbitrary and
accidental, there is an artificiality of the most rigid kind. The natural,
we now perceive, sinks into and merges in a Higher Artificial. To adopt
a comparison more apt than dignified, we may be said to be placed here as
insects are in a garden of the old style. Our first unassisted view is limited,
and we perceive only the irregularities of the minute surface, and single
shrubs which appear arbitrarily scattered. But our view at length extending
and becoming more comprehensive, we begin to see parterres balancing each
other, trees, statues, and arbours placed symmetrically, and that the whole
is an

assemblage of parts mutually reflective. It can scarcely
be necessary to point to the inference hence arising with regard to the
origination of nature in some Power, of which man's mind is a faint and
humble representation. The insects of the garden, supposing them to be invested
with reasoning power, and aware how artificial are their own works, might
of course very reasonably conclude that, being in its totality an artificial
object, the garden was the work of some maker or artificer. And so also
must we conclude, when we attain a knowledge of the artificiality which
is at the basis of nature, that nature is wholly the production of a Being
resembling, but infinitely greater than ourselves.

Organic beings are, then, bound together in development,
and in a system of both affinities and analogies. Now, it will be asked,
does this agree with what we know of the geographical distribution of organic
beings, and of the history of organic progress as delineated by geology
? Let us first advert to the geographical question.

Plants, as is well known, require various kinds
of soil, forms of geographical surface, climate, and other conditions, for
their existence. And it is everywhere found that, however isolated a parti-

cular spot may be with regard to these conditions,-
as a mountain top in a torrid country, the marsh round a salt spring far
inland, or an island placed far apart in the ocean,-appropriate plants have
there taken up their abode. But the torrid zone divides the two temperate
regions from each other by the space of more than forty-six degrees, and
the torrid and temperate zones together form a much broader line of division
between the two arctic regions. The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and the
Persian Gulf, also divide the various portions of continent in the torrid
and temperate zones from each other. Australia is also divided by a broad
sea from the continent of Asia. Thus there are various portions of the earth
separated from each other in such a way as to preclude anything like a general
communication of the seeds of their respective plants towards each other.
Hence arises an interesting question-are the plants of the various isolated
regions which enjoy a parity of climate and other conditions, identical
or the reverse? The answer is-that in such regions the vegetation bears
a general resemblance, but the species are nearly all different,
and there is even, in a considerable measure, a diversity of families.

The general facts have been thus stated: in the
arctic and antarctic regions, and in those parts of lower latitudes, which,
from their elevation, possess the same cold climate, there is always a similar
or analogous vegetation, but few species are common to the various situations.
In like manner, the intertropical vegetation of Asia, Africa, and America,
are specifically different, though generally similar. The southern region
of America is equally diverse from that of Africa, a country similar in
clime, but separated by a vast extent of ocean. The vegetation of Austraia,
another region similarly placed in respect of clime, is even more peculiar.
These facts are the more remarkable when we discover that, in most instances,
the plants of one region have thriven when transplanted to another of parallel
clime. This would shew that parity of conditions does not lead to a parity
of productions so exact as to include identity of species, or even genera.
Besides the various isolated regions here enumerated, there are some others
indicated by naturalists as exhibiting a vegetation equally peculiar. Some
of these are isolated by mountains, or the interposition of sandy wastes.
For example, the temperate region of the elder continent is divided about
the centre of

Asia, and the east of that line is different from
the west. So also is the same region divided in North America by the Rocky
Mountains. Abyssinia and Nubia constitute another distinct botanical region.
De Candolle enumerates in all twenty well-marked portions of the earth's
surface which are peculiar with respect to vegetation; a number which would
be greatly increased if remote islands and isolated mountain ranges were
to be included.

When we come to the zoology, we find precisely
similar results, excepting that man (with, perhaps, some of the less conspicuous
forms of being) is universal, and that several tribes, as the bear and dog,
appear to have passed by the land connexion from the arctic regions of the
eastern to those of the western hemisphere. "With these exceptions," says
Dr. Prichard, "and without any others, as far as zoological researches
have yet gone, it may be asserted that no individual species are common
to distant regions. In parallel climates, analogous species replace each
other; sometimes, but not frequently, the same genus is found in two separate
continents; but the species which are natives of one region are not identical

" A similar result arises when we compare the
three great intertropical regions, as well as the extreme spaces of the
three great continents, which advance into the temperate climates of the
southern hemisphere.

" Thus, the tribes of simi , (monkeys,)
of the dog and cat kinds, of pachyderms, including elephants, tapirs, rhinoceroses,
hogs, of bats, of saurian and ophidian reptiles, as well of birds and other
terrene animals, are all different in the three great continents. In the
lower departments of the mammiferous family, we find that the brute, or
edendata, (sloths, armadillos, &c,) of Africa, are differently organized
from those of America, and these again from the tribes found in the Malayan
archipelago and Terra Australis."*

It does not appear that the diversity between
the similar regions of Africa, Asia, and America, is occasioned in all instances
by any disqualification of these countries to support precisely the same
genera or species. The ox, horse, goat, &c., of the elder continent
have thriven and extended themselves in the new, and many of the indigenous
tribes of America would no doubt flourish in corresponding climates in Europe,
Asia, and Africa

It has, however, been remarked by naturalists unacquainted
with the Macleay system, that the larger and more powerful animals of their
respective orders belong to the elder continent, and that thus the animals
of America, unlike the features of inanimate nature, appear to be upon a
small scale. The swiftest and most agile animals, and a large proportion
of those most useful to man, are also natives of the elder continent. On
the other hand, the bulk of the edemata, a group remarkable for defects
and meanness of organization, are American. The zoology of America ma, be
said, upon the whole, to recede from that of Asia, "and perhaps in a greater
degree," adds Dr. Prichard, "from that of Africa." A much greater recession
is, however, observed in both the botany and zoology of Australia

There "we do not find, in the great masses of
vegetation, either the majesty of the virgin forests of America or the variety
and elegance of those of Asia, or the delicacy and freshness of the woods
of our temperate countries of Europe. The vegetation is generally gloomy
and sad; it has the aspect of our evergreens or heaths; the plants are for
the most part woody; the leaves of nearly all the plants are linear, lanceolated,

ceous, and spinescent. The grasses, which elsewhere
are generally soft and flexible, participate in the stiffness of the other
vegetables. The greater part of the plants of New England belong to new
genera; and those included in the genera already known are of new species.
The natural families which prevail are those of the heaths, the prot,
composit , leguminos, and myrthoidea; the larger trees all
belong to the last family."*

The prevalent animals of Australia are not less
peculiar. It is well known that none above the marsupialia, or pouched animals,
are native to it. The most conspicuous are these marsupials, which exist
in great varieties here, though unknown in the elder continent, and only
found in a few mean forms in America. Next to them are the monotremata,
which are entirely peculiar to this portion of the earth. Now these are
animals at the bottom of the mammiferous class, adjoining to that of birds,
of whose character and organization the monotremata largely partake, the
ornithorynchus presenting the bill and feet of a duck, producing its young
in eggs, and having, like birds, a clavicle between the two shoulders. The
birds of Australia vary in structure and plumage, but all have some singu-

rarity about them-the swan, for instance, is black.
The country abounds in reptiles, and the prevalent fishes are of the early
kinds, having a cartilaginous structure.

Altogether, the plants and animals of this minor
continent convey the impression of an early system of things, such as might
be displayed in other parts of the earth about the time of the oolite. In
connexion with this circumstance, it is a fact of some importance, that
the geognostic character of Australia, its vast arid plains, its little
diversified surface and consequent paucity of streams, and the very slight
development of volcanic rock on its surface, seem to indicate a system of
physical conditions, such as we may suppose to have existed elsewhere in
the oolitic era: perhaps we see the chalk formation preparing there in the
vast coral beds frontiering the coast. Australia thus appears as a portion
of the earth which has, from some unknown causes, been belated in its physical
and organic development. And certainly the greater part of its surface is
not fitted to be an advantageous place of residence for beings above the
marsupialia, and judging from analogy, it may yet be subjected to a series
of changes in the highest degree incon-

The general conclusions regarding the geography
of organic nature, may be thus stated. (1.) There are numerous distinct
foci of organic production throughout the earth. (2.) These have everywhere
advanced in accordance with the local conditions of climate &c., as
far as at least the class and order are concerned, a diversity taking place
in the lower gradations. No physical or geographical reason appearing for
this diversity, we are led to infer that, (3,) it is the result of minute
and inappreciable causes giving the law of organic development a particular
direction in the lower subdivisions of the two kingdoms. (4.) Development
has not gone on to equal results in the various continents, being most advanced
in the eastern continent, next in the western, and least in Australia, this
inequality being perhaps the result of the comparative antiquity of the
various regions, geologically and geographically.

It must at the same time be admitted that the
line of organic development has nowhere required for its advance the whole
of the families comprehended in the two kingdoms, seeing that some of

these are confined to one continent, and some to
another, without a conceivable possibility of one having been connected
with the other in the way of ancestry. The two great families of quadrumana,
cebid and simiad, are a noted instance, the one being exclusively
American, while the other belongs entirely to the old world. There are many
other cases in which the full circular group can only be completed by taking
subdivisions from various continents. This would seem to imply that, while
the entire system is so remarkable for its unity, it has nevertheless been
produced in lines geographically detached, these lines perhaps consisting
of particular typical groups placed in an independent succession, or of
two or more of these groups. And for this idea there is, even in the present
imperfect state of our knowledge of animated nature, some countenance in
ascertained facts, the birds of Australia, for example, being chiefly of
the suctorial type, while it may be presumed that the observation as to
the predominance of the useful animals in the Old World, is not much different
from saying that the rasorial type is there peculiarly abundant. It does
not appear that the idea of independent lines, consisting of particular
types, or sets of types, is

necessarily inconsistent with the general hypothesis,
as nothing yet ascertained of the Macleay system forbids their having an
independent set of affinities. On this subject, however, there is as yet
much obscurity, and it must be left to future inquirers to clear it up.

We must now call to mind that the geographical
distribution of plants and animals was very different in the geological
ages from what it is now. Down to a time not long antecedent to man, the
same vegetation overspread every clime, and a similar uniformity marked
the zoology. This is conceived by M. Brognialt, with great plausibility,
to have been the result of a uniformity of climate, produced by the as yet
unexhausted effect of the internal heat of the earth upon its surface; whereas
climate has since depended chiefly on external sources of heat, as modified
by the various meteorological influences. However the early uniform climate
was produced, certain it is that, from about the close of the geological-
epoch, plants and animals have been dispersed over the globe with a regard
to their particular characters, and specimens of both are found so isolated
in particular situations, as utterly to exclude the idea that they came
thither from any common centre. It may be

asked,-Considering that, in the geological epoch,
species are not limited to particular regions, and that since the close
of that epoch, they are very peculiarly limited, are we to presume the present
organisms of the world to have been created ab initio after that
time? To this it may be answered,-Not necessarily, as it so happens that
animals begin to be much varied, or to appear in a considerable variety
of species, towards the close of the geological history. It may have been
that the multitudes of locally peculiar species only came into being after
the uniform climate had passed away. It may have only been when a varied
climate arose, that the originally few species branched off into the present
extensive variety.

A question of a very interesting kind will now
probably arise in the reader's mind-What place or status is assigned
to man in the new natural system? Before going into this inquiry, it
is necessary to advert to several particulars of the natural system not
yet noticed.

It is necessary, in particular, to ascertain
the grades which exist in the classification of animals. In the line of
the aves, Mr. Swainson finds these to be nine, the species pica, for example,
being thus indicated:—

This brings us down to species, the subdivision
where intermarriage or breeding is usually considered as natural to animals,
and where a resemblance of offspring to parents is generally persevered
in. The dog, for instance, is a species, because all dogs can breed together,
and the progeny partakes of the appearances of the parents. The human race
is held as a species, primarily for the same reasons. Species, however,
is liable to another subdivision, which naturalists call variety; and variety
appears to be subject to exactly the same system of representation which have been traced in species and higher denominations. In canis, for
instance, the bull-dog and mastiff represent the ferocious sub-typical group;
the waterdog is natatorial; we see the speed and length of muzzle of the
suctorial group in the greyhound; and the bushy tail and gentle and serviceable
character of the rasorial in the shepherd's dog and

spaniel. Even the striped and spotted skin of the
tiger and panther is reproduced in the more ferocious kind of dogs-an indication
of a fundamental connexion between physical and mental qualities which we
have also seen in the zebra, and which is likewise displayed in the predominance
of a yellow colour in the vultures and owls in common with the lion and
his congeners.

It is by no means clearly made out that this
system of nine gradations over and above that of variety applies in all
departments of nature. On the contrary, even Mr. Swainson gives series in
which several of them are omitted. It may be that, in some departments of
nature, variation from the class or order has gone down into fewer shades
than in others; or it may be, that many of the variations have not survived
till our era, or have not been as yet detected by naturalists in either
of which cases there may be a necessity for shortening the series by the
omission of one or two grades, as for instance tribe or sub-family.
This, however, is much to be regretted, as it introduces an irregularity
into the natural system, and consequently throws a difficulty and doubt
in the way of our investigating it. With these preliminary

remarks, I shall proceed to inquire what is the natural
status of man.

That man's place is to be looked for in the class mammalia and sub-kingdom vertebrata admits of no doubt, from his possessing
both the characters on which these divisions are founded. When we descend,
however, below the class, we find no settled views on the subject amongst
naturalists. Mr. Swainson, who alone has given a review of the animal kingdom
on the Macleay system, unfortunately writes on this subject in a manner
which excites a suspicion as to his judgment. His arrangement of the first
or typical order of the mammalia is therefore to be received with great
hesitation. It is as follows:—

Typical . Quadramana Pre-eminently organized
for grasping.

sub-typical Fer . . Claws retractile;
carnivorous.

Natatorial Cetac . . Pre-eminently
aquatic; feet very short.

Suctorial . Glires . . Muzzle lengthened
and pointed.

Rasorial . Ungulata . Crests and other processes
on the head.

He then takes the quadrumana, and places it in
the following arrangement:—

He considers the simiad as a complete circle,
and argues thence that there is no room in the range of the animal kingdom
for man. Man, he says, is not a constituent part of any circle, for, if
he were, there ought to be other animals on each hand having affinity to
him, whereas there are none, the resemblance of the orangs being one of
mere analogy. Mr. Swainson therefore considers our race as standing apart,
and forming a link between the unintelligent order of beings and the angels
! And this in spite of the glaring fact that, in our teeth, hands, and other
features grounded on by naturalists as characteristic, we do not differ
more from the simiad than the bats do from the lemurs-in spite also
of that resemblance of analogy to the orangs which he himself admits, and
which, at the least, must be held to imply a certain relation. He also overlooks
that, though there may- be no room for man in the circle of the simiad,
(this, indeed, is quite true.) there may be in the order, where he actually
leaves a place entirely blank, or only to be filled up, as he suggests,
by mermen !* Another argument in his arrange-

* Mr. Swainson's arguments about the
entireness of the circle simiad are only too rigid, for fossil
geology has since added new genera to this group and the cebid,
and there may be still farther additions.

ment is, that it leaves the grades of classification
very much abridged, there being at the most seven instead of nine. But serious
argument on a theory so preposterous may be considered as nearly thrown
away. I shall therefore at once proceed to suggest a new arrangement of
this portion of the animal kingdom, in which man is allowed the place to
which he is zoologically entitled.

I propose that the typical order of the mammalia
should be designated cheirotheria, from the sole character which is universal
amongst them, their possessing hands, and with a regard to that pre-eminent
qualification for grasping which has been ascribed to them-an analogy to
the perching habit of the typical order of birds, which is worthy of particular
notice. The tribes of the cheirotheria I arrange as follows:—

Typical . . Bimana.

Sub-typical . . Simiad .

Natatorial . Vespertilionid.

Suctorial . Lemurid .

Rasorial . Cebid.

Here man is put into the typical place, as the genuine
head, not only of this order, but of the whole animal world. The double
affinity which is requisite is obtained, for here he has the simiad

on one band, and the cebid on the other. The
five tribes of the order are completed, the vespertilionid ,- being
shifted (provisionally) into the natatorial place, for which their appropriateness
is so far evidenced by the aquatic habits of several of the tribe, and the
lemurid into the suctorial, to which their length of muzzle and remarkable
saltatory power are highly suitable. At the same time, the simiad
are degraded from the typical place, to which they have no sort of pretension,
and placed where their mean and mischievous character seem to require; the
cebid again being assigned that situation which their comparatively
inoffensive dispositions, their arboreal habits, and their extraordinary
development of the tail, (which with them is like a fifth hand,) render
so proper.

The zoological status thus assigned to the human
race is precisely what might be expected. In order to understand its full
value, it is necessary to observe how the various type peculiarities operate
in fixing the character of the animals ranked in them. It is easy to conceive
that they must be, in some instances, much mixed up with each other, and
consequently obscured. If an animal, for example, is the suctorial member
of a circle of species, forming the natatorial type of genera, forming a

family or sub-family which in its turn is rasorial,
its qualities must evidently be greatly mingled and ill to define. But,
on the other hand, if we take the rapacious or sub-typical group of birds,
and look in it for the tribe which is again the rapacious or sub-typical
group of its order, we may expect to find the qualities of that group exalted
or intensified, and accordingly made the more conspicuous. Such is really
the case with the vultures, in the rapacious birds, a family remarkable
above all of their order for their carnivorous and foul habits. So, also,
if we take the typical group of the birds, the incessores or perchers, and
look in it for its typical group, the conirostres, and seek there again
for the typical family of that group, the corvid , we may expect to
find a very marked superiority in organization and character. Such is really
the case. "The crow," says Mr. Swainson, "unites in itself a greater number
of properties than are to be found individually in any other genus of birds;
as if in fact it had taken from all the other orders a portion of their
peculiar qualities, for the purpose of exhibiting in what manner they could
be combined. From the rapacious birds this "type of types," as the crow

in the air, and of seizing upon living birds, like
the hawks, while its habit of devouring putrid substances, and picking out
the eyes of young animals, is borrowed from the vultures. From the scansorial
or climbing order it takes the faculty of picking the ground, and discovering
its food when hidden from the eye, while the parrot family gives it the
taste for vegetable food, and furnishes it with great cunning, sagacity,
and powers of imitation, even to counterfeiting the human voice. Next come
the order of waders, who impart their quota to the perfection of the crow
by giving it great powers of flight, and perfect facility in walking, such
being among the chief attributes of the suctorial order. Lastly, the aquatic
birds contribute their portion, by giving this terrestrial bird the power
of feeding not only on fish, which are their peculiar food, but actually
of occasionally catching it.* In this wonderful manner do we find the crow
partially invested with the united properties of all other birds, while
in its own order, that of the incessores or perchers, it stands the pre-eminent
type. We cannot also fail to regard it as a remarkable proof of the superior
organization and character of the corvid, that they are adapted

Mr. Swainson's description of the zoological
status of the crow, written without the least design of throwing any light
upon that of man, evidently does so in a remarkable degree. It prepares
us to expect in the place among the mammalia, corresponding to that of the
corvid in the aves, a being or set of beings possessing a remarkable
concentration of qualities from all the other groups of their order, but
in general character as far above the corvid as a typical group is
above an aberrant one, the mammalia above the aves. Can any of the simiad
pretend to such a place, narrowly and imperfectly endowed as these creatures
are-a mean reflection apparently of something higher? Assuredly not, and
in this consideration alone Mr. Swainson's arrangement must fall to the
ground. To fill worthily so lofty a station in the animated families man
alone is competent. In him only is to be found that concentration of qualities
from all the other groups of his order which has been described as marking
the corvid. That grasping power, which has been selected as the leading
physical quality of his order, is nowhere so beautifully or so powerfully
developed as in his hand.

The intelligence and teachableness of the simiad
rise to a climax in his pre-eminent mental nature. His sub-analogy to the
fer is marked by his canine teeth, and the universality of his rapacity,
for where is the department of animated nature which he does not without
scruple sacrifice to his convenience? With sanguinary, he has also gentle
and domesticable dispositions, thus reflecting the character of the ungulate,
(the rasorial type of the class,) to which we perhaps see a further analogy
in the use which he makes of the surface of the earth as a source of food.
To the aquatic type his love of maritime adventure very readily assimilates
him; and how far the suctorial is represented in his nature it is hardly
necessary to say. As the corvid , too, are found in every part of
the earth -almost the only one of the inferior animals which has been acknowledged
as universal-so do we find man. He thrives in all climates, and with regard
to style of living, can adapt himself to an infinitely greater diversity
of circumstances than any other animated creature.

Man, then, considered zoologically, and without
regard to the distinct character assigned to him by theology, simply takes
his place as the type of all types of the animal kingdom, the true and unmis-

takable head of animated nature upon this earth.
It will readily occur that some more particular investigations into the
ranks of types might throw additional light on man's status, and perhaps
his nature; and such light we may hope to obtain when the philosophy of
zoology shall have been studied as it deserves. Perhaps some such diagram
as the one given on the next page will be found to be an approximation to
the expression of the merely natural or secular grade of man in comparison
with other animals.

Here the upright lines, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, may represent
the comparative height and grade of organization of both the five sub-kingdoms,
and the five classes of each of these; 5 being the vertebrate in the one
case, and the mammalia in the other. The difference between the height of
the line 1 and the line 5 gives an idea of the difference of being the head
type of the aves, (corvid,) and the head type of the mammalia, (bimana;) a. b. c. d. 5, again, represent the five groups of the first order
of the mammalia; a, being the organic structure of the highest simia, and
5, that of man. A set of tangent lines of this kind may yet prove one of
the most satisfactory means of ascertaining the height and breadth of the
psychology of our species.

It may be asked,-Is the existing human race the
only species designed to occupy the grade to which it is here referred?
Such a question evidently ought not to be answered rashly; and I shall therefore
confine myself to the admission that, judging by analogy, we might expect
to see several varieties of the being, homo. There is no other family approaching
to this in importance, which presents but one species: The corvid ,
our parallel in aves, consist of several distinct genera and sub-genera.
It is startling to find such

an appearance of imperfection in the circle to which
man belongs, and the ideas which rise in consequence are not less startling.
Is our race but the initial of the grand crowning type? Are there yet to
be species superior to us in organization, purer in feeling, more powerful
in device and act, and who shall take a rule over us! There is in this
nothing improbable on other grounds. The present race, rude and impulsive
as it is, is perhaps the best adapted to the present state of things in
the world; but the external world goes through slow and gradual changes,
which may leave it in time a much serener field of existence. There may
then be occasion for a nobler type of humanity, which shall complete the
zoological circle on this planet, and realize some of the dreams of the
purest spirits of the present race.

EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND.

____

THE human race is known to consist of numerous nations,
displaying considerable differences of external form and colour, and speaking
in general different languages. This has been the case since the commencement
of written record. It is also ascertained that the external peculiarities
of particular nations do not rapidly change. There is rather a tendency
to a persistency of type in all lines of descent, insomuch that a subordinate
admixture of various type is usually obliterated in a few generations. Numerous
as the varieties are, they have all been found classifiable under five leading
ones:—1. The Caucasian, or Indo- European, which extends from India into
Europe and Northern Africa; 2. The Mongolian, which occupies Northern and
Eastern Asia; 3. The

Malayan, which extends from the Ultra-Gangetic Peninsula
into the numerous islands of the South Sea and Pacific; 4. The Negro, chiefly
confined to Africa; 5. The aboriginal American. Each of these is distinguished
by certain general features of so marked a kind, as to give rise to a supposition
that they have had distinct or independent origins. Of these peculiarities,
colour is the most conspicuous: the Caucasians are generally white, the
Mongolians yellow, the Negroes black, and the Americans red. The opposition
of two of these in particular, white and black, is so striking, that of
them, at least, it seems almost necessary to suppose separate origins. Of
late years, however, the whole of this question has been subjected to a
rigorous investigation, and it has been successfully shewn that the human
race might have had one origin, for anything that can be inferred from external
peculiarities.

It appears from this inquiry,* that colour and
other physiological characters are of a more superficial and accidental
nature than was at one time supposed. One fact is at the very first extremely
startling, that there are nations, such as the inha-

bitants of Hindostan, known to be one in descent,
which nevertheless contain groups of people of almost all shades of colour,
and likewise discrepant in other of those important features on which much
stress has been laid. Some other facts, which I may state in brief terms,
are scarcely less remarkable. In Africa, there are Negro nations,-that is,
nations of intensely black complexion, as the Jolofs, Mandingoes, and Kafirs,
whose features and limbs are as elegant as those of the est European nations.
While we have no proof of Negro races becoming white in the course of generations,
the converse may be held as established, for there are Arab and Jewish families
of ancient settlement in Northern Africa, who have become as black as the
other inhabitants. There are also facts which seem to shew the possibility
of a natural transition by generation from the black to the white complexion,
and from the white to the black. True whites (apart from Albinoes) are not
unfrequently born among the Negroes, and the tendency to this singularity
is transmitted in families. There is, at least, one authentic instance of
a set of perfectly black children being born to an Arab couple, in whose
ancestry no such blood had intermingled. This occurred in

the valley of the Jordan, where it is remarkable
that the Arab population in general have flatter features, darker skins,
and coarser hair, than any other tribes of the same nation.*

The style of living is ascertained to have a
powerful effect in modifying the human figure in the course of generations,
and this even in its osseous structure. About two hundred years ago, a number
of people were driven by a barbarous policy from the counties of Antrim
and Down, in Ireland, towards the sea-coast, where they have ever since
been settled, but in unusually miserable circumstances, even for Ireland;
and the consequence is, that they exhibit peculiar features of the most
repulsive kind, projecting jaws with large open mouths, depressed noses,
high cheek bones, and bow legs, together with an extremely diminutive stature.
These, with an abnormal slenderness of the limbs, are the outward marks
of a low and barbarous condition all over the world; it is particularly
seen in the Australian aborigines. On the other hand, the beauty of the
higher ranks in England is very remarkable, being, in the main,

* Buckingham's Travels among the Arabs.
This fact is the more valuable to the argument, as having been set down
with no regard to any kind of hypothesis.

as clearly a result of good external conditions.
"Coarse, unwholesome, and ill-prepared food," says Buffon, "makes the
human race degenerate. All those people who live miserably are ugly and
ill-made. Even in France, the country people are not so beautiful as those
who live in towns; and I have often remarked that in those villages where
the people are richer and better fed than in others, the men are likewise
more handsome, and have better countenances." He might have added, that
elegant and commodious dwellings, cleanly habits, comfortable clothing,
and being exposed to the open air only as much as health requires, co- operate

Subject only to these modifying agencies, there
is, as has been said, a remarkable persistency in national features and
forms, insomuch that a single individual thrown into a family different
from himself is absorbed in it, and all trace of him lost after a few generations.
But while there is such a persistency to ordinary observation, it would
also appear that nature has a power of producing new varieties, though this
is only done rarely. Such novelties of type abound in the vegetable world,
are seen more rarely in the animal circle, and

perhaps are least frequent of occurrence in ourown
race. There is a noted instance in the production, on a New England farm,
of a variety of sheep with unusually short legs, which was kept up by breeding,
on account of the convenience in that country of having sheep which are
unable to jump over low fences. The starting and maintaining of a breed of cattle, that is, a variety marked by some desirable peculiarity, are
familiar to a large class of persons. It appears only necessary, when a
variety has been thus produced, that a union should take place between individuals
similarly characterized, in order to establish it. Early in the last century,
a man named Lambert, was born in Suffolk, with semi-horny excrescences of
about half an inch long, thickly growing all over his body. The peculiarity
was transmitted to his children, and was last heard of in a third generation.
The peculiarity of six fingers on the hand and six toes on the feet, appears
in like manner in families which have no record or tradition of such a peculiarity
having affected them at any former period, and it is then sometimes seen
to descend through several generations. It was Mr. Lawrence's opinion, that
a pair, in which both parties were so distinguished, might be the progenitors
of

a new variety of the race who would be thus marked
in all future time. It is not easy to surmise the causes which operate in
producing such varieties. Perhaps they are simply types in nature, possible
to be realized under certain appropriate conditions, but which conditions
are such as altogether to elude notice. I might cite as examples of such
possible types, the rise of whites amongst the Negroes, the occurrence of
the family of black children in the valley of the Jordan, and the comparatively
frequent birth of red-haired children amongst not only the Mongolian and
Malayan families, but amongst the Negroes. We are ignorant of the laws of
variety-production; but we see it going on as a principle in nature, and
it is obviously favourable to the supposition that all the great families
of men are of one stock.

The tendency of the modern study of the languages
of nations is to the same point. The last fifty years have seen this study
elevated to the character of a science, and the light which it throws upon
the history of mankind is of a most remarkable nature.

Following a natural analogy, philologists have
thrown the earth's languages into a kind of classification: a number bearing
a considerable resem-

blance to each other, and in general geographically
near, are styled a group or sub-family; several groups, again,
are associated as a family, with regard to more general features of resemblance.
Six families are spoken of.

The Indo-European family nearly coincides in
geographical limits with those which have been assigned to that variety
of mankind which generally shews a fair complexion, called the Caucasian
variety. It may be said to commence in India, and thence to stretch through
Persia into Europe, the whole of which it occupies, excepting Hungary, the
Basque provinces of Spain, and Finland. Its sub-families are the Sanskrit,
or ancient language of India, the Persian, the Slavonic, Celtic, Gothic,
and Pelasgian. The Slavonic includes the modern languages of Russia and
Poland. Under the Gothic, are (1)the Scandinavian tongues, the Norske, Swedish,
and Danish; and (2) the Teutonic, to which belong the modern German, the
Dutch, and our own Anglo-Saxon. I give the name of Pelasgian to the group
scattered along the north shores of the Mediterranean, the Greek and Latin,
including the modifications of the latter under the names of Italian, Spanish,
&c The Celtic was from two to three thousand years

ago, the speech of a considerable tribe dwelling
in Western Europe; but these have since been driven before superior nations
into a few corners, and are now only to be found in the highlands of Scotland,
Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, and certain parts of France. The Gaelic of Scotland,
Erse of Ireland, and the Welsh, are the only living branches of this sub-family
of languages.

The resemblances amongst languages are of two
kinds,-identity of words, and identity of grammatical forms; the latter
being now generally considered as the most important towards the argument.
When we inquire into the first kind of affinity among the languages of the
Indo-European family, we are surprised at the great number of common terms
which exist amongst them, and these referring to such primary ideas, as
to leave no doubt of their having all been derived from a common source.
Colonel Vans Kennedy presents nine hundred words common to the Sanskrit
and other languages of the same family. In the Sanskrit and Persian, we
find several which require no sort of translation to an English reader,
as pacer, mader, sunu, dokhter, brader, mand, vidhava; likewise asthi, a bone, (Greek, ostoun;) denta,
a tooth, (Latin, dens, dentis;) eyeumen, the eye; brouwa,

The inferences from these verbal coincidences
were confirmed in a striking manner when Bopp and others investigated the
grammatical structure of this family of languages. Dr. Wiseman pronounces
that the great philologist just named, "by a minute and sagacious analysis
of the Sanskrit verb, compared with the conjugational system of the other
members of this family, left no doubt of their intimate and positive affinity."
It was now discovered that the peculiar terminations or inflections by which
persons are expressed throughout the verbs of nearly the whole of these
languages, have their foundations in pronouns; the pronoun was simply placed
at the end, and thus became an inflexion. "By an analysis of the Sanskrit
pronouns, the elements of those existing in all the other languages were

of fragments referable to two distinct roots, here
found both existing in regular form; the Greek conjugations, with all their
complicated machinery of middle voice, augments, and reduplications, were
here found and illustrated in a vaiety of ways, which a few years ago would
have appeared chimerical. Even our own language may sometimes receive light
from the study of distant members of our family. Where, for instance, are
we to seek for the root of our comparative better? Certainly not
in its positive, good, nor in the Teutonic dialects in which the same anomaly
exists. But in the Persian we have precisely the same comparative, behter,
with exactly the same signification, regularly formed from its positive beh, good."*

* Wiseman's Lectures on the Connexion
between Science and Revealed Religion, i. 44. The Celtic has been established
as a member or group of the Indo-European family, by the work of Dr.
Prichard, on the Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations. "First,"
says Dr. Wiseman, "he has examined the lexical resemblances, and shewn
that the primary and most simple words are the same in both, as well
as the numerals and elementary verbal roots. Then follows a minute analysis
of the verb, directed to shew its analogies with other languages, and
they are such as manifest no casual coincidence, but an internal structure
radically the same. The verb substantive, which is minutely analysed,
presents more striking analogies to the Persian verb than perhaps any

The second great family is the Syro-Phoenician,
comprising the Hebrew, Syro-Chaldaic, Arabic, and Gheez or Abyssinian, being
localized principally in the countries to the west and south of the Mediterranean.
Beyond them, again, is the African family, which, as far as research has
gone, seems to be in like manner marked by common features, both verbal
and grammatical. The fourth is the Polynesian family, extending from Madagascar
on the west through all the Indian Archipelago, besides taking in the Malayan
dialect from the continent of India, and comprehending Australia and the
islands of the western portion of the Pacific This family, however, bears
such an affinity to that next to be described, that Dr. Leyden and some
others do not give it a distinct place as a family of languages.

member of this confederacy, but has
brought to it most important aid; for, from it alone can be satisfactorily
explained some of the conjugational endings in the other languages.
For instance, the third person plural of the Latin, Persian, Greek,
and Sanscrit ends in nt, nd, υτι, υτο,
nti, or nt. Now, supposing, with most grammarians, that the inflexions
arose from the pronouns of the respective persons, it is only in Celtic
that we find a pronoun that can explain this termination; for there,
too, the same person ends in nt, and thus corresponds exactly, as do
the others, with its pronoun, hwynt, or ynt."

The fifth family is the Chinese, embracing a
large part of China, and most of the regions of Central and Northern Asia
The leading features of the Chinese are, its consisting altogether of monosyllables,
and being destitute of all grammatical forms, except certain arrangements
and accentuations, which vary the sense of particular words. It is also
deficient in some of the consonants most conspicuous in other languages,
b, d, r, v, and z; so that this people can scarcely pronounce our speech
in such a way as to be intelligible: for example, the wor Christus they
call Kuliss-ut-oo-suh. The Chinese, strange to say, though they early
attained to a remarkable degree of civilization, and have preceded the Europeans
in many of the most important inventions, have a language which resembles
that of children, or deaf and dumb people. The sentence of short, simple,
unconnected words, in which an infant amongst us attempts to express some
of its wants and its ideas-the equally broken and difficult terms which
the deaf and dumb express by signs, as the following passage of the Lord's
Prayer:—" Our Father, heaven in, wish your name respect, wish your soul's
kingdom providence arrive, wish your will do heaven earth equality," &c.-these
are

like the discourse of the refined people of the so-
called Celestial Empire. An attempt was made by the Abb Sicard to
teach the deaf and dumb grammatical signs; but they persisted in restricting
themselves to the simple signs of ideas, leaving the structure undetermined
by any but the natural order of connexion. Such is exactly the condition
of the Chinese language.

Crossing the Pacific, we come to the last great
family in the languages of the aboriginal Americans, which have all of them
features in common, proving them to constitute a group by themselves, without
any regard to the very different degrees of civilization which these nations
had attained at the time of the discovery. The common resemblance is in
the grammatical structure as well as in words, and the grammatical structure
of this family is of a very peculiar and complicated kind. The general character
in this respect has caused the term Polysynthetic to be applied to the American
languages. A long many-syllabled word is used by the rude Algonquins and
Delawares to express a whole sentence: for example, a woman of the latter
nation, playing with a little dog or cat, would perhaps be heard saying,
"kuligatschis," meaning, "give me your pretty little paw;" the

word, on examination, is found to be made up in this
manner: k, the second personal pronoun; uli, part of the word
wulet, pretty; gat, part of the word wichgat, signifying a leg or
paw; schis, conveying the idea of littleness. In the same tongue,
a youth is called pilape, a word compounded from the first part of pilsit,
innocent, and the latter part of lenape, a man. Thus, it will be observed,
a number of parts of words are taken and thrown together, by a process which
has been happily termed agglutination, so as to form one word, conveying
a complicated idea. There is also an elaborate system of inflection; in
nouns, for instance, there is one kind of inflection to express the presence
or absence of vitality, and another to express number. The genius of the
language has been described as accumulative: it "tends rather to add syllables
or letters, making farther distinctions in objects already before the mind,
than to introduce new words."* Yet it has also been shewn very distinctly,
that these languages are based in words of one syllable, like those of the
Chinese and Polynesian families; all the primary ideas are thus expressed:

be simply a farther development of the language-
forming principle, as it may be called-or the Chinese system may be described
as an arrestment of this principle at a particular early point. It has been
fully shewn, that between the structure of the American and other families,
sufficient affinities exist to make a common origin or early connexion extremely
likely. The verbal affinities are also very considerable. Humboldt says,
"In eighty-three American languages examined by Messrs. Barton and Vater,
one hundred and seventy words have been found, the roots of which appear
to be the same; and it is easy to perceive that this analogy is not accidental,
since it does not rest merely upon imitative harmony, or on that conformity
of organs which produces almost a perfect identity in the first sounds articulated
by children. Of these one hundred and seventy words which have this connexion,
three-fifths resemble the Manchou, the Tongouse, the Mongal, and the Samoyed;
and two-fifths, the Celtic and Tchoud, the Biscayan, the Coptic, and Congo
languages. These words have been found by comparing the whole of the American
languages with the whole of those of the Old World; for hitherto we are

idiom which seems to have an exclusive correspondence
with any of the Asiatic, African, or European tongues."* Humboldt and others
considered these words as brought into America by recent immigrants; an
idea resting on no proof, and which seems at once refuted by the common
words being chiefly those which represent primary ideas; besides, we now
know, what was not formerly perceived or admitted, that there are great
affinities of structure also. I may here refer to a curious mathematical
calculation by Dr. Thomas Young, to the effect, that if three words coincide
in two different languages, it is ten to one they must be derived in both
cases from some parent language, or introduced in some other manner. "Six
words would give more," he says, "than seventeen hundred to one, and eight
near 100,000, so that in these cases the evidence would be little short
of absolute certainty." He instances the following words to shew a connexion
—

Now, as there are, according to Humboldt, one hundred
and seventy words in common between the languages of the new and old continents,
and many of these are expressive of the most primitive ideas, there is,
by Dr. Young's calculation, over- powering proof of the original connexion
of the American and other human families.

This completes the slight outline which I have
been able to give, of the evidence for the various races of men being descended
from one stock. It cannot be considered as conclusive, and there are many
eminent persons who deem the opposite idea the more probable; but I must
say that, without the least regard to any other kind of evidence, that which
physiology and philology present seems to me decidedly favourableto the
idea of a single origin.

Assuming that the human race is one, we
are next called upon to inquire in what part of the earth it may most probably
be supposed to have originated. One obvious mode of approximating to a solution
of this question is to trace backward

the lines in which the principal tribes appear to
have migrated, and to see if these converge nearly to a point. It is very
remarkable that the lines do converge, and are concentrated about the region
of Hindostan. The language, religion, modes of reckoning time, and some
other peculiar ideas of the Americans, are now believed to refer their origin
to North-Eastern Asia. Trace them farther back in the same direction, and
we come to the north of India. The history of the Celts and Teutones represents
them as coming from the east, the one after the other, successive waves
of a tide of population flowing towards the north-west of Europe: this line
being also traced back, rests finally at the same place. So does the line
of Iranian population, which has peopled the east and south shores of the
Mediterranean, Syria, Arabia, and Egypt. The Malay variety, again, rests
its limit in one direction on the borders of India. Standing on that point,
it is easy to see how the human family, originating there, might spread
out in different directions, passing into varieties of aspect and of language
as they spread, the Malay variety proceeding towards the Oceanic region,
the Mongolians to the east and north, and sending off the red men as a sub-variety,
the European

population going off to the north-westward, and the
Syrian, Arabian, and Egyptian, towards the countries which they are known
to have so long occupied. The Negro alone is here unaccounted for; and of
that race it may fairly be said, that it is the one most likely to have
had an independent origin, seeing that it is a type so peculiar in an inveterate
black colour, and so mean in development. But it is not necessary to presume
such an origin for it, as much good argument might be employed to shew that
it is only a deteriorated offshoot of the general stock. Our view of the
probable original seat of man agrees with the ancient traditions of the
race. There is one among the Hindoos which places the cradle of the human
family in Thibet; another makes Ceylon the residence of the first man. Our
view is also in harmony with the hypothesis detailed in the chapter before
the last. According to that theory, we should expect man to have originated
where the highest species of the quadrumana are to be found. Now these are
unquestionably found in the Indian Archipelago.

After all, it may be regarded as still an open
question, whether mankind is of one or many origins. The first human generation
may have

consisted of many pairs, though situated at one place,
and these may have been considerably different from each other in external
characters. And we are equally bound to admit, though this does not as yet
seem to have occurred to any other speculator, that there may have been
different lines and sources of origination, geographically apart, but which
all resulted uniformly in the production of a being, one in species, although
variously marked.

It has of late years been a favourite notion
with many, that the human race was at first in a highly civilized state,
and hat barbarism was a second condition. This idea probably took its origin
in a wish to support certain interpretations of the Mosaic record, and it
has never yet been propounded by any writer who seemed to have a due sense
of the value of science in this class of investigations The principal argument
for it is, that we see many examples of nations falling away from civilization
into barbarism, while in some regions of the earth, the history of which
we do not clearly know, there are remains of works of art far superior to
any which the present unenlightened inhabitants could have produced. It
is to be readily admitted that such decadences are

common; but do they necessarily prove that there
has been anything like a regular and constant decline into the present state,
from a state more generally refined? May not these be only instances of
local failures and suppressions of the principle of civilization, where
it had begun to take root amongst a people generally barbarous? It is,
at least, as legitimate to draw this inference from the facts which are
known. But it is also alleged that we know of no such thing as civilization
being ever self-originated. It is always seen to be imparted from one people
to another. Hence, of course, we must infer that civilization at the first
could only have been of supernatural origin. This argument appears to be
founded on false premises, for civilization does sometimes rise in a manner
clearly independent amongst a horde of people generally barbarous. A striking
instance is described in the laborious work of Mr. Catlin on the North-American
tribes. Far placed among those which inhabit the vast region of the northwest,
and quite beyond the reach of any influence from the whites, he found a
small tribe living in a fortified village, where they cultivated the arts
of manufacture, realized comforts and luxuries, and had attained to a remarkable
refinement of man-

ners, insomuch as to be generally called the polite
and friendly Mandans. They were also more than usually elegant in their
persons, and of every variety of complexion between that of their com- patriots
and a pure white. Up to the time of Mr. Catlin's visit, these people had
been able to defend themselves and their possessions against the roving
bands which surrounded them on all sides; but, soon after, they were attacked
by small-pox, which cut them all off except a small party, whom their enemies
rushed in upon and destroyed to a man. What is this but a repetition on
a small scale of phenomena with which ancient history familiarizes us-a
nation rising in arts and elegances amidst barbarous neighbours, but at
length overpowered by the rude majority, leaving only a Tadmor or a Luxor
as a monument of itself to beautify the waste? What can we suppose the
nation which built Palenque and Copan to have been but only a Mandan tribe,
which chanced to have made its way farther along the path of civilization
and the arts, before the barbarians broke in upon it? The flame essayed
to rise in many parts of the earth; but there were always considerable chances
against it, and down it accordingly went, times without number; but there
was always a

vitality in it, nevertheless, and a tendency to progress,
and at length it seems to have attained a strength against which the powers
of barbarism can never more prevail. The state of our knowledge of uncivilized
natins is very apt to make us fall into error on this subject. They are
generally supposed to be all at one point in barbarism, which is far from
being the case, for in the midst of every great region of uncivilized men,
such as North America, there are nations partially refined. The Jolof, Mandingoes,
and Kafirs, are African examples, where a natural and independent origin
for the improvement which exists is as unavoidably to be presumed as in
the case of the Mandans.

The most conclusive argument against the original
civilization of mankind is to be found in the fact that we do not now see
civilization existing anywhere except in certain conditions altogether different
from any we can suppose to have existed at the commencement of our race.
To have civilization, it is necessary that a people should be numerous and
closely placed; that they should be fixed in their habitations, and safe
from violent external and internal disturbance; that a considerable number
of them should be exempt from the necessity of drudging for immediate subsist-

ence. Feeling themselves at ease about the first
necessities of their nature, including self-preservation, and daily subjected
to that intellectual excitement which society produces, men begin to manifest
what is called civilization; but never in rude and shelterless circumstances,
or when widely scattered. Even men who have been civilized, when transferred
to a wide wilderness, where each has to work hard and isolatedly for the
first requisites of life, soon shew a retrogression to barbarism: witness
the plains of Australia, as well as the backwoods of Canada and the prairies
of Texas. Fixity of residence and thickening of population are perhaps the
prime requisites for civilization, and hence it will be found that all civilizations
as yet known have taken place in regions physically limited. That of Egypt
arose in a narrow valley hemmed in by deserts on both sides. That of Greece
took its rise in a small peninsula bounded on the only land side by mountains.
Etruria and Rome were naturally limited regions. Civilizations have taken
place at both the eastern and western extremities of the elder continent-China
and Japan, on the one hand; Germany, Holland, Britain, France, on the other-while
the great unmarked tract between contains nations decidedly

less advanced. Why is this, but because the sea,
in both cases, has imposed limits to further migration, and caused the population
to settle and condense -the conditions most necessary for social improvement.*
Even the simple case of the Mandans affords an illustration of this principle,
for Mr. Catlin expressly, though without the least regard to theory, attributes
their improvement to the fact of their being a small tribe, obliged, by
fear of their more numerous enemies, to settle in a permanent village,
so fortified as to ensure their preservation. "By this means," says he,
"they have advanced farther in the arts of manufacture, and have supplied
their lodges more abundantly with the comforts and even luxuries of life
than any Indian nation I know of. The consequence of this," he adds, "is
that the tribe have taken many steps ahead of other tribes in manners
and refinements." These conditions can only be regarded as natural laws
affecting civilization, and it might not be difficult, taking them into
account, to

* The problem of Chinese civilization,
such as it is- so puzzling when we consider that they are only, as will
be presently seen, the child race of mankind-is solved when we look
to geographical position producing fixity of residence and density of
population.

predict of any newly settled country its social destiny.
An island like Van Dieman's land might fairly be expected to go on more
rapidly to good manners and sound institutions than a wide region like Australia.
The United States might be expected to make no great way in civilization
till they be fully peopled to the Pacific; and it might not be unreasonable
to expect that, when that even has occurred, the greatest civilizations
of that vast territory will be found in the peninsula of California and
the narrow stripe of country beyond the Rocky Mountains. This, however,
is a digression. To return: it is also necessary for a civilization that
at least a portion of the community should be placed above mean and engrossing
toils. Man's mind becomes subdued, like the dyer's hand, to that it works
in. In rude and difficult circumstances we unavoidably become rude, because
then only the inferior and harsher faculties of our nature are called into
existence. When, on the contrary, there is leisure and abundance, the self-seeking
and self-preserving instincts are allowed to rest, the gentler and more
generous sentiments are evoked, and man becomes that courteous and chivalric
being which he is found to be amongst the upper classes of almost all civilized

countries. These, then, may be said to be the chief
natural laws concerned in the moral phenomenon of civilization. If I am
right in so considering them, it will of course be readily admitted that
the earliest families of the human race, although they might be simple and
innocent, could not have been in anything like a civilized state, seeing
that the conditions necessary for that state could not have then existed.
Let us only for a moment consider some of the things requisite for their
being civilized,-namely, a set of elegant homes ready furnished for their
reception, fields ready cultivated to yield them food without labour, stores
of luxurious appliances of all kinds, a complete social enginery for the
securing of life and property,-and we shall turn from the whole conceit
as one worthy only of the philosophers of Utopia.

Yet, as has been remarked, the earliest families
might be simple and innocent, while at the same time unskilled and ignorant,
and obliged to live merely upon such substances as they could readily procure.
The traditions of all nations refer to such a state as that in which mankind
were at first: perhaps it is not so much a tradition as an idea which the
human mind naturally inclines to

form respecting the fathers of the race; but nothing
that we see of mankind absolutely forbids our entertaining this idea, while
there are some considerations rather favourable to it. A few families, in
a state of nature, living near each other, in a country supplying the means
of livelihood abundantly, are generally simple and innocent; their instinctive
and perceptive faculties are also apt to be very active, although the higher
intellect may be dormant. If we therefore presume India to have been the
cradle of our race, they might at first exemplify a sort of golden age;
but it could not be of long continuance. The very first movements from the
pimal seat would be attended with degradation, nor could there be any tendency
to true civilization till groups had settled and thickened in particular
seats physically limited.

The probability may now be assumed that the human
race sprung from one stock, which was at first in a state of simplicity,
if not barbarism. As yet we have not seen very distinctly how the various
branches of the family, as they parted off, and took up separate ground,
became marked by external features so peculiar. Why are the Africans black,
and generally marked by coarse

features and ungainly forms? Why are the Mongolians
generally yellow, the Americans red, the Caucasians white? Why the flat
features of the Chinese, the small stature of the Laps, the soft round forms
of the English, the lank features of their descendants, the Americans?
All of these phenomena appear, in a word, to be explicable on the ground
of development. We have already seen that various leading animal
forms represent stages in the embryotic progress of the highest-the human
being. Our brain goes through the various stages of a fish's, a reptile's,
and a mammifer's brain, and finally becomes human. There is more than this,
for, after completing the animal transformations, it passes through the
characters in which it appears, in the Negro, Malay, American, and Mongolian
nations, and finally is Caucasian. The face partakes of these alterations.
"One of the earliest points in which ossification commences is the lower
jaw. This bone is consequently sooner completed than the other bones of
the head, and acquires a predominance, which, as is well known, it never
loses in the Negro. During the soft pliant state of the bones of the skull,
the oblong form which they naturally assume, approaches nearly the permanent

Americans. At birth, the flattened face, and broad
smooth forehead of the infant, the position of the eyes rather towards the
side of the head, and the widened space between, represent the Mongolian
form; while it is only as the child advances to maturity, that the oval
face, the arched forehead, and the marked features of the true Caucasian,
become perfectly developed."* The leading characters, in short, of the
various races of mankind, are simply representations of particular stages
in the development of the highest or Caucasian type. The Negro exhibits
permanently the imperfect brain, projecting lower jaw, and slender bent
limbs, of a Caucasian child, some considerable time before the period of
its birth. The aboriginal American represents the same child nearer birth.
The Mongolian is an arrested infant newly born. And so forth. All this is
as respects form; but whence colour? This might be supposed to have depended
on climatal agencies only; but it has been strewn by overpowering evidence
to be

* Lord's Popular Physiology, explaining
observations by M. Serres.

醆 Conformably to this view, the beard,
that peculiar attribute of maturity, is scanty in the Mongolian, and
scarcely exists in the Americans and Negroes.

independent of these. In further considering the
matter, we are met by the very remarkable fact that colour is deepest in
the least perfectly developed type, next in the Malay, next in the American,
next in the Mongolian, the very order in which the degrees of development
are ranged. May not colour, then, depend upon development also? We do not, indeed, see that a Caucasian foetus at the stage which the African
represents is anything like black; neither is a Caucasian child yellow,
like the Mongolian. There may, nevertheless, be a character of skin at a
certain stage of development which is predisposed to a particular colour
when it is presented as the envelope of a mature being. Development being
arrested at so immature a stage in the case of the Negro, the skin may take
on the colour as an unavoidable consequence of its imperfect organization.
It is favourable to this view, that Negro infants are not deeply black at
first, but only acquire the full colour tint after exposure for some time
to the atmosphere. Another consideration in its favour is that there is
a likelihood of peculiarities of form and colour, since they are so coincident,
depending on one set of phenomena. If it be admitted as true, there can
be no difficulty in accounting for all the varieties of

mankind. They are simply the result of so many advances
and retrogressions in the developing power of the human mothers, these advances
and retrogressions being, as we have formerly seen, the immediate effect
of external conditions in nutrition, hardship, &c.,. and also, perhaps,
to some extent, of the suitableness and unsuitableness of marriages, for
it is found that parents too nearly related tend to produce offspring of
the Mongolian type,-that is, persons who in maturity still are a kind of
children. According to this view, the greater part of the human race must
be considered as having lapsed or declined from the original type. In the
Caucasian or Indo-European family alone has the primitive organization been
improved upon. The Mongolian, Malay, American, and Negro, comprehending
perhaps five-sixths of mankind, are degenerate. Strange that the great plan

* Of this we have perhaps an illustration
in the peculiarities which distinguish the Arabs residing in the valley
of the Jordan. They have flatter features darker skins and coarser hair
than other tribes of their nation; and we have seen one instance of
a thoroughly Negro family being born to an ordinary couple. It may be
presumed that the conditions of the life of these people tend to arrest
development. We thus see how an offshoot of the human family migrating
at an early period into Africa, might in time, from subjection to similar
influences, become Negroes.

should admit of failures and aberrations of such
portentous magnitude! But pause and reflect; take time into consideration:
the past history of mankind may be, to what is to come, but as a day. Look
at the progress even now making over the barbaric parts of the earth by
the best examples of the Caucasian type, promising not only to fill up the
waste places, but to supersede the imperfect nations already existing. Who
can tell what progress may be made, even in a single century, towards reversing
the proportions of the perfect and imperfect types? and who can tell but
that the time during which the mean types have lasted, long as it appears,
may yet be thrown entirely into the shade by the time during which the best
types will remain predominant?

We have seen that the traces of a common origin
in all languages afford a ground of presumption for the unity of the human
race. These establish a still stronger prbability that mankind had not
yet begun to disperse before they were possessed of a means of communicating
their ideas by conventional sounds-in short, speech. This is a gift so peculiar
to man, and in itself so remarkable, that there is a great inclination to
surmise a miraculous origin for it, although there is no proper

ground, or even support, for such an idea in Scripture,
while it is clearly opposed to everything else that we know with regard
to the providential arrangements for the creation of our race. Here, as
in many other cases, a little observation of nature might have saved much
vain discussion. The real character of language itself has not been thoroughly
understood. Language, in its most comprehensive sense, is the communication
of ideas by whatever means. Ideas can be communicated by looks, gestures,
and signs of various other kinds, as well as by speech. The inferior animals
possess some of those means of communicating ideas, and they have likewise
a silent and unobservable mode of their own, the nature of which is a complete
mystery to us, though we are assured of its reality by its effects. Now,
as the inferior animals were all in being before man, there was language
upon earth long ere the history of our race commenced. The only additional
fact in the history of language, which was produced by our creation, was
the rise of a new mode of expression-namely, that by sound-signs produced by the vocal organs. In other words, speech was the only novelty
in this respect attending the creation of the human race. No doubt it was
an

addition of great importance, for, in comparison
with it, the other natural modes of communicating ideas sink into insignificance.
Still, the main and fundamental phenomenon, language, as the communication
of ideas, was no new gift of the Creator to man; and in speech itself,
when we judge of it as a natural fact, we see only a result of some of those
superior endowments of which so many others have fallen to our lot through
the medium of an improved or advanced organization.

The first and most obvious natural endowment
concerned in speech is that peculiar organization of the larynx, trachea,
and mouth, which enables us to produce the various sounds required in the
case. Man started at first with this organization ready for use, a constitution
of the atmosphere adapted for the sounds which that organization was calculated
to produce, and, lastly, but not leastly, as will afterwards be more particularly
shewn, a mental power within, prompting to, and giving directions for, the
expression of ideas. Such an arrangement of mutually adapted things was
as likely to produce sounds as an Eolian harp placed in a draught is to
produce tones. It was unavoidable that human beings so organized, and in
such a relation to external nature, should utter sounds,

and also come to attach to these conventional meanings,
thus forming the elements of spoken language. The great difficulty which
has been felt was to account for man going in this respect beyond the inferior
animals. There could have been no such difficulty if speculators in this
class of subjects had looked into physiology for an account of the superior
vocal organization of man, and had they possessed a true science of mind
to shew man possessing a faculty for the expression of ideas which is only
rudimental in the lower animals. Another diffiulty has been in the consideration
that, if men were at first utterly untutored and barbarous, they could scarcely
be in a condition to form or employ language-an instrument which it requires
the fullest powers of thought to analyse and speculate upon. But this difficulty
also vanishes upon reflection-for, in the first place, we are not bound
to suppose the father of our race early attaining to great proficiency in
language, and, in the second, language itself seems to be amongst the things
least difficult to be acquired, if we can form any judgment from what we
see in children, most of whom have, by three gears of age, while their information
and judgment are still as nothing, mastered and familiarized

themselves with a quantity of words, infinitely exceeding
in proportion what they acquire in the course of any subsequent similar
portion of time.

Discussions as to which parts of speech were
first formed, and the processes by which grammatical structure and inflections
took their rise, appear in a great measure needless, after the matter has
been placed in this light. The mental powers could readily connect particular
arbitrary sounds with particular ideas, whether those ideas were nouns,
verbs, or interjections. As the words of all languages can be traced back
into roots which are monosyllables, we may presume these sounds to have
all been monosyllabic accordingly. The clustering of two or more together
to express a compound idea, and the formation of inflections by additional
syllables expressive of pronouns and such prepositions as of, by, and to,
are processes which would or might occur as matters of course, being simple
results of a mental power called into action, and partly directed, by external
necessities. This power, however, as we find it in very different degrees
of endowment in individuals, so would it be in different degrees of endowment
in nations, or branches of the human family. Hence we find the formation
of words and the process of their

composition and grammatical arrangement, in very
different stages of development in different races. The Chinese have a language
composed of a limited number of monosyllables, which they multiply in use
by mere variations of accent, and which they have never yet attained the
power of clustering or inflecting; the language of this immense nation-the
third part of the human race-may be said to be in the condition of infancy.
The aboriginal Americans, so inferior in civilization, have, on the other
hand, a language of the most elaborately composite kind, perhaps even exceeding,
in this respect, the languages of the most refined European nations. These
are but a few out of many facts tending to shew that language is in a great
measure independent of civilization, as far as its advance and development
are concerned. Do they not also help to prove that cultivated intellect
is not necessary for the origination of language?

Facts daily presented to our observation afford
equally simple reasons for the almost infinite diversification of language.
It is invariably found that, wherever society is at once dense and refined,
language tends to be uniform throughout the whole population, and to undergo
few changes in the

course of time. Wherever, on the contrary, we have
a scattered and barbarous people, we have great diversities, and comparatively
rapid alterations f language. Insomuch that, while English, French, and
German are each spoken with little variation by many millions, there are
islands in the Indian archipelago, probably not inhabited by one million,
but in which there are hundreds of languages, as diverse as are English,
French, and German. It is easy to see how this should be. There are peculiarities
in the vocal organization of every person, tending to produce peculiarities
of pronunciation; for example, it has been stated that each child in a family
of six gave the monosyllable, fly, in a different manner, (eye, fy, ly,
&c.) until, when the organs were more advanced, correct example induced
the proper pronunciation of this and similar words. Such departures from
orthoepy are only to be checked by the power of such example, but this is
a power not always present, or not always of sufficient strength. The able
and self-devoted Robert Moffat, in his work on South Africa, states, without
the least regard to hypothesis, that amongst the people of the towns of
that great region, "the purity and harmony of language is kept up by their
pitchos or public

meetings, by their festivals and ceremonies, as well
as by their songs and their constant intercourse. With the isolated villages
of the desert it is far otherwise. They have no such meetings; they are
compelled to traverse the wilds, often to a great distance from their native
village. On such occasions, fathers and mothers, and all who can bear a
burden, often set out for weeks at a time, and leave their children to the
care of two or three infirm old people. The infant progeny, some of whom
are beginning to lisp, while others can just master a whole sentence, and
those still farther advanced, romping and playing together, the children
of nature, through the live-long day, becomehabituated to a language
of their own. The more voluble condescend to the less precocious, and
thus, from this infant Babel, proceeds a dialect composed of a host of mongrel
words and phrases, joined together without rule, and in the course of
a generation the entire character of the language is changed "* I have
been told, that in like manner the children of the Manchester factory workers,
left for a great part of the day, in large assemblages, under the care of
perhaps a single elderly person,

and spending the time in amusements, are found to
make a great deal of new language. I have seen children in other circumstances
amuse themselves by concocting and throwing into the family circulation
entirely new words; and I believe I am running little risk of contradiction
when I say that there is scarcely a family, even amongst the middle classes
of this country, who have not some peculiarities of pronunciation and syntax,
which have originated amongst themselves, it is hardly possible to say how.
All these things being considered, it is easy to understand how mankind
have come at length to possess between three and four thou- sand languages,
all different at least as much as French, German, and English, though, as
has been shewn, the traces of a common origin are observable in them all.

What has been said on the question whether mankind
were originally barbarous or civilized, will have prepared the reader for
understanding how the arts and sciences, and the rudiments of civilization
itself, took their rise amongst men. The nly source of fallacious views
on this subject is the so frequent observation of arts, sciences, and social
modes, forms, and ideas, being not indigenous where we see them now flourishing,
but

known to have been derived elsewhere: thus Rome borrowed
from Greece, Greece from Egypt, and Egypt itself, lost in the mists of historic
antiquity, is now supposed to have obtained the light of knowledge from
some still earlier scene of intellectual culture. This has caused to many
a great difficulty in supposing a natural or spontaneous origin for civilization
and the attendant arts. But, in the first place, several stages of derivation
are no conclusive argument against there having been an originality at some
earlier stage. In the second, such observers have not looked far enough,
for, if they had, they could have seen various instances of civilizations
which it is impossible, with any plausibility, to trace back to a common
origin with others; such are those of China and America They would also
have seen civilization springing up, as it were, like oases amongst the
arid plains of barbarism, as in the case of the Mandans. A still more attentive
study of the subject would have shewn, amongst living men, the very psychological
procedure on which the origination of civilization and the arts and sciences
depended.

These things, like language, are simply the effects
of the spontaneous working of certain mental faculties, each in relation
to the things of

the external world on which it was intended by creative
Providence to be exercised. The monkeys themselves, without instruction
from any quarter, learn to use sticks in fighting, and some build houses-an
act which cannot in their case be considered as one of instinct, but of
intelligence. Such being the case, there is no necessary difficulty in supposing
how man, with his superior mental organization, (a brain five times heavier,)
was able, in his primitive state, without instruction, to turn many things
in nature to his use, and commence, in short, the circle of the domestic
arts. He appears, in the most unfavourable circumstances, to be able to
provide himself with some sort of dwelling, to make weapons, and to practise
some simple kind of cookery. But, granting, it will bc said, that he can
go thus far, how does he ever proceed farther unprompted, seeing that many
nations remain fixed for ever at this point, and seem unable to take one
step in advance? It is perfectly true that there is such a fixation in many
nations; but, on the other hand, all nations are not alike in mental organization,
and another point has been established, that only when some favourable circumstances
have settled a people in one place, do arts and social arrangements get
leave to

flourish. If we were to limit our view to humbly
endowed nations, or the common class of minds in those called civilized,
we should see absolutely no conceivable power for the origination of new
ideas and devices. But let us look at the inventive class of minds which
stand out amongst their fellows-the men who, with little prompting or none,
conceive new ideas in science, arts, morals- and we can be at no loss to
understand how and whence have arisen the elements of that civilization
which history traces from country to country throughout the course of centuries.
See a Pascal, reproducing the Alexandrian's problems atfifteen; a Ferguson,
making clocks from the suggestions of his own brain, while tending cattle
on a Morayshire heath; a boy Lawrence, in an inn on the Bath road, producing,
without a master, drawings which the educated could not but admire; or look
at Solon and Confucius, devising sage laws, and breathing the accents of
all but divine wisdom, for their barbarous fellow-countrymen, three thousand
years ago-and the whole mystery is solved at once. Amongst the arrangements
of Providence is one for the production of original, inventive, and aspiring
minds, which when circumstances are not decidedly unfavourable, strike out
new

ideas for the benefit of their fellow-creatures,
or put upon them a lasting impress of their superior sentiments. Nations,
improved by these means, become in turn foci for the diffusion of
light over the adjacent regions of barbarism-their very passions helping
to this end, for nothing can be more clear than that ambitious aggression
has led to the civilization of many countries. Such is the process which
seems to form the destined means for bringing mankind from the darkness
of barbarism to the day of knowledge and mechanical and social improvement.
Even the noble art of letters is but, as Dr. Adam Fergusson has remarked,
"a natural produce of the human mind, which will rise spontaneously, wherever
men are happily placed;" original alike amongst the ancient Egyptians and
the dimly monumented Toltecans of Yucatan. "Banish," says Dr. Gall, "music,
poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, all the arts and sciences, and
let your Homers, Raphaels, Michael Angelos, Glucks, and Canovas, be forgotten,
yet let men of genius of every description spring up, and poetry, music,
painting, architecture, sculpture, and all the arts and sciences will again
shine out in all their glory. Twice within the records of history has the

the great circle of its entire destiny, and twice
has the rudeness of barbarism been followed by a higher degree of refinement.
It is a great mistake to suppose one people to have proceeded from another
on account of their conformity of manners, customs, and arts. The swallow
of Paris builds its nest like the swallow of Vienna, but does it thence
follow that the former sprung from the latter? With the same causes we
have the same effects; with the same organization we have the manifestation
of the same powers.''

MENTAL CONSTITUTION
OF ANIMALS.

____

IT has been one of the most agreeable tasks of modern
science to trace the wonderfully exact adaptations of the organization of
animals to the physical circumstances amidst which they are destined to
live. From the mandibles of insects to the hand of man, all is seen to be
in the most harmonious relation to the things of the outward world, thus
clearly proving that design presided in the creation of the whole-design
again implying a designer, another word for a CREATOR.

It would be tiresome to present in this place
even a selection of the proofs which have been adduced on this point. The
Natural Theology of Paley, and the Bridgewater Treatises, place the subject
in so clear a light, that the general postulate may be taken for granted.
The physical

constitution of animals is, then, to be regarded
as in the nicest congruity and adaptation to the external world.

Less clear ideas have hitherto been entertained
on the mental constitution of animals. The very nature of this constitution
is not as yet generally known or held as ascertained. There is, indeed,
a notion of old standing, that the mind is in some way connected with the
brain; but the metaphysicians insist that it is, in reality, known only
by its acts or effects, and they accordingly present the subject in a form
which is unlike any other kind of science, for it does not so much as pretend
to have nature for its basis. There is a general disinclination to regard
mind in connexion with organization, from a fear that this must needs interfere
with the cherished religious doctrine of the spirit of man, and lower him
to the level of the brutes. A distinction is therefore drawn between our
mental manifestations and those of the lower animals, the latter being comprehended
under the term instinct, while ours are collectively described as mind,
mind being again a received synonyme with soul, the immortal part of man.
There is here a strange system of confusion and error, which it is most
imprudent to regard as

essential to religion, since candid investigations
of nature tend to shew its untenableness. There is, in reality, nothing
to prevent our regarding man as specially endowed with an immortal spirit,
at the same time that his ordinary mental manifestations are looked upon
as simple phenomena resulting from organization, those of the lower animals
being phenomena absolutely the same in character, though developed within
much narrower limits.*

* "Is not God the first cause of matter
as well as of mind? Do not the first attributes of matter lie as inscrutable
in the bosom of God-of its first author-as those of mind? Has not even
matter confessedly received from God the power of experiencing, in consequence
of impressions from the earlier modifications of matter, certain consciousnesses
called sensations of the same? Is not, therefore, the wonder of matter
also receiving the consciousnesses of other matter called ideas of the
mind a wonder more flowing out of and in analogy with all former wonders,
than would be, on the contrary, the wonder of this faculty of the mind
not flowing out of any faculties of matter? Is it not a wonder which,
so far from destroying our hopes of immortality, can establish that
doctrine on a train of inferences and inductions more firmly established
and more connected with each other than the former belief can be, as
soon as we have proved that matter is not perishable, but is only liable

" Can we look farther back one way
into the first origin of matter than we can look forward the other way
into the last developments of mind? Can we say that God has not in matter
itself laid the seeds of every faculty of mind, rather than that he

What has chiefly tended to take mind, in the
eyes of learned and unlearned, out of the range of nature, is its apparently
irregular and wayward character. How different the manifestations in different
beings! how unstable in all!-at one time so calm, at another so wild and
impulsive! It seemed impossible that anything so subtle and aberrant could
be part of a system, the main features of whic are regularity and precision.
But

has made the first principle of mind
entirely distinct from that of matter? Cannot the first cause of all
we see and know have fraught matter itself, from its very beginning,
with all the attributes necessary to develop into mind, as well as he
can have from the first made the attributes of mind wholly different
from those of matter, only in order afterwards, by an imperceptible
and incomprehensible link, to join the two together?

" * * [The decombination of the
matter on which mind rests] is this a reason why mind must be annihilated
? Is the temporary reverting of the mind, and of the sense out of which
that mind developes, to their original component elements, a reason
for thinking that they cannot again at another later period, and in
another higher globe, be again recombined, and with more splendour than
before? * * The New Testament does not after death here promise us
a soul hereafter unconnected with matter, and which has no connexion
with our present mind-a soul independent of time and space. That is
a fanciful idea, not founded on its expressions, when taken in their
just and real meaning. On the contrary, it promises us a mind like the
present, founded on time and space; since it is, like the present, to
hold a certain situation in time, and a certain locality in space. But

the irregularity of mental phenomena is only in appearance.
When we give up the individual, and take the mass, we find as much uniformity
of result as in any other class of natural phenomena. The irregularity is
exactly of the same kind as that of the weather. No man can say what may
be the weather of to-morrow; but the quantity of rain which falls in any
particular place in any five years, is precisely the same as the quantity
which falls in any other five years at the same place. Thus, while it is
absolutely impossible to predict of any one Frenchman that during next year
he will commit a crime, it is quite certain that about one in every six
hundred and fifty of the French

it promises a mind situated in portions
of time and of space different from the present; a mind composed of
elements of matter more extended, more perfect, and more glorious: a
mind which, formed of materials supplied by different globes, is consequently
able to see farther into the past, and to think farther into the future,
than any mind here existing: a mind which, freed from the partial and
uneven combination incidental to it on this globe, will be exempt from
the changes for evil to which, on the present globe, mind as well as
matter is liable, and will only thenceforth experience the changes for
the better which matter, more justly poised, will alone continue to
experience: a mind which, no longer fearing the death, the total decomposition,
to which it is subject on this globe, will thenceforth continue last
and immortal."-HOPE, on the Origin and Prospects of Man, 1831.

people will do so, because in past years the proportion
has generally been about that amount, the tendencies to crime in relation
to the temptations being everywhere invariable over a sufficiently wide
range of time. So also, the number of persons taken in charge by the police
in London for being drunk and disorderly on the streets, is, week by week,
a nearly uniform quantity, shewing that the incliation to drink to excess
is always in the mass about the same, regard being had to the existing temptations
or stimulations to this vice. Even mistakes and oversights are of regular
recurrence, for it is found in the post-offices of large cities, that the
number of letters put in without addresses is year by year the same. Statistics
has made out an equally distinct regularity in a wide range, with regard
to many other things concerning the mind, and the doctrine founded upon
it has lately produced a scheme which may well strike the ignorant with
surprise. It was proposed to establish in London a society for ensuring
the integrity of clerks, secretaries, collectors, and all such functionaries
as are usually obliged to find security for money passing through their
hands in the course of business. A gentleman of the highest character as
an actuary spoke of the plan in the

following terms:—" If a thousand bankers' clerks
were to club together to indemnify their securities, by the payment of one
pound a year each, and if each had given security for 500l., it is
obvious that two in each year might become defaulters to that amount, four
to half the amount, and so on, without rendering the guarantee fund insolvent.
If it be tolerably well ascertained that the instances of dishonesty (yearly)
among such persons amount to one in five hundred, this club would continue
to exist, subject to being in debt in a bad year, to an amount which it
would be able to discharge in good ones. The only question necessary to
be asked previous to the formation of such a club would be,-may it not be
feared that the motive to resist dishonesty would be lessened by the existence
of the club, or that ready-made rogues, by belonging to it, might find the
means of obtaining situations which they would otherwise have been kept
out of by the impossibility of obtaining security among those who know them
? Suppose this be sufficiently answered by saying, that none but those who
could bring satisfactory testimony to their previous good character should
be allowed to join the club; that persons who may now hope that a deficiency
on their parts will be made up and

hushed up by the relative or friend who is security,
will know very well that the club will have no motive to decline a prosecution,
or to keep the secret, and so on. It then only remains to ask, whether the
sum demanded for the guarantee is sufficient?",* The philosophical principle
on which the scheme proceeds, seems to be simply this, that, amongst a given
(large) number of persons of good character, there will be, within a year
or other considerable space of time, a determinate number of instances in
which moral principle and the terror of the consequences of guilt will be
overcome by temptations of a determinate kind and amount, and thus occasion
a certain periodical amount of loss which the association must make up.

This statistical regularity in moral affairs
fully establishes their being under the presidency of law. Man is now seen
to be an enigma only as an individual; in the mass he is a mathematical
problem. It is hardly necessary to say, much less to argue, that mental
action, being proved to be under law, passes at once into the category of
natural things. Its old metaphysical character vanishes in a

* Dublin Review, Aug. 1840. The Guarantee
Society has since been established, and is likely to beome a useful
and prosperous institution.

moment, and the distinction usually taken between
physical and moral is annulled, as only an error in terms. This view agrees
with what all observation teaches, that mental phenomena flow directly from
the brain. They are seen to be dependent on naturally constituted and naturally
conditioned organs, and thus obedient, like all other organic phenomena,
to law. And how wondrous must the constitution of this apparatus be, which
gives us consciousness of thought and of affection, which makes us familiar
with the numberless things of earth, and enables us to rise in conception
and communion to the councils of God himself! It is matter which forms the
medium or instrument-a little mass which, decomposed, is but so much common
dust; yet in its living constitution, designed, formed, and sustained by
Almighty Wisdom, how admirable its character! how reflective of the unutterable
depths of that Power by which it was so formed, and is so sustained!

In the mundane economy, mental action takes its
place as a means of providing for the independent existence and the various
relations of animals, each species being furnished according to its special
necessities and the demands of its various relations The nervous system-the
more comprehensive term

for its organic apparatus-is variously developed
in different classes and species, and also in different individuals, the
volume or mass bearing a general relation to the amount of power. In the
mollusca and crustacea we see simply a ganglionic cord pervading the extent
of the body, and sending out lateral filaments. In the vertebrata, we find
a brain with a spinal cord, and branching lines of nervous tissue.* But
here, as in the general structure of animals, the great principle of unity
is observed. The brain of the vertebrata is merely an expansion of one of
the ganglions of the nervous cord of the mollusca and crustacea. Or the
corresponding ganglion of the mollusca and crustacea may be regarded as
the rudiment of a brain; the superior organ thus appearing as only a farther
development of the inferior. There are many facts which tend to prove that
the action of this apparatus is of an electric nature, a modification of
that surprising agent, which takes magnetism, heat, and light, as other
subordinate forms, and of whose general scope in this great system of things

* The ray, which is considered the lowest
in the scale of fishes, or next to the crustaceans, gives the first
faint representation of a brain in certain scanty and medullary masses,
which appear as merely composed of enlarged origins of the nerves.

we are only beginning to have a right conception.
It has been found that simple electricity, artificially produced, and sent
along the nerves of a dead body, excites muscular action. The brain of a
newly-killed animal being taken out, and replaced by a substance which produces
electric action, the operation of digestion, which had been interrupted
by the death of the animal, was resumed, shewing the absolute identity of
the brain with a galvanic battery. Nor is this a very startling idea, when
we reflect that electricity is almost as metaphysical as ever mind was supposed
to be. It is a thing perfectly intangible, weightless. Metal may be magnetized,
or heated to seven hundred of Fahrnheit, without becoming the hundredth
part of a grain heavier. And yet electricity is a real thing, an actual
existence in nature, as witness the effects of heat and light in vegetation-the
power of the galvanic current to re-assemble the particles of copper from
a solution, and make them again into a solid plate-the rending force of
the thunderbolt as it strikes the oak; see also how both heat and light
observe the angle of incidence in reflection, as exactly as does the grossest
stone thrown obliquely against a wall. So mental action may

be imponderable, intangible, and yet a real existence,
and ruled by the Eternal through his laws.*

Common observation shews a great general superiority
of the human mind over that of the inferior animals. Man's mind is almost
infinite in device; it ranges over all the world; it forms the most wonderful
combinations; it seeks back into the past, and stretches forward into the
future; while the animals generally appear to have a narrow range of thought
and action. But so also has an infant but a limited range, and yet it is
mind which works there, as well as in the most accomplished adults. The
difference between mind in the lower animals and in man is a difference
in degree

* If mental action is electric, the
proverbial quickness of thought-that is, the quickness of the transmission
of sensation and will-may be presumed to have been brought to an exact
measurement. The speed of light has long been known to be about 192,000
miles per second, and the experiments of Wheatstone have shewn that
the electric agent travels (if I may so speak) at the same rate, thus
shewing a likelihood that one law rules the movements of all the "imponderable
bodies." Mental action may accordingly be presumed to have a rapidity
equal to one hundred and ninety-two thousand miles in the second-a rate
evidently far beyond what is necessary to make the design and execution
of any of our ordinary muscular movements apparently identical in point

only; it is not a specific difference. All who have
studied animals by actual observation, and even those who have given a candid
attention to the subject in books, must attain more or less clear convictions
of this truth, notwithstanding all the obscurity which prejudice may have
engendered. We see animals capable of affection, jealousy, envy; we see
them quarrel, and conduct quarrels, in the very manner pursued by the more
impulsive of our own race. We see them liable to flattery, inflated with
pride, and dejected by shame. We see them as tender to their young as human
parents are, and as faithful to a trust as the most conscientious of human
servants. The horse is startled by marvellous objects, as a man is. The
dog and many others shew tenacious memory. The dog also proves himself possessed
of imagination, by the act of dreaming. Horses, finding themselves in want
of a shoe, have of their own accord gone to a farrier's shop where they
were shod before. Cats, closed up in rooms, will endeavour to obtain their
liberation by pulling a latch or ringing a bell. It has several times been
observed that in a field of cattle, when one or two were mischievous, and
persisted long in annoying or tyrannizing over the rest, the herd, to all
appearance, consulted, and

then, making a unted effort, drove the troublers
off the ground. The members of a rookery have also been observed to take
turns in supplying the needs of a family reduced to orphanhood. All of these
are acts of reason, in no respect different from similar acts of men. Moreover,
although there is no heritage of accumulated knowledge amongst the lower
animals, as there is amongst us, they are in some degree susceptible of
those modifications of natural character, and capable of those accomplishments,
which we call education. The taming and domestication of animals, and the
changes thus produced upon their nature in the course of generations, are
results identical with civilization amongst ourselves; and the quiet, servile
steer is probably as unlike the original wild cattle of this country, as
the English gentleman of the present day is unlike the rude baron of the
age of King John. Between a young, unbroken horse, and a trained one, there
is, again, all the difference which exists between a wild youth reared at
his own discretion in the country, and the same person when he has been
toned down by long exposure to the influences of refined society. On the
accomplishments acquired by animals it were superfluous to enter at any
length; but I may advert to the

dogs of M. Leonard, as remarkable examples of what
the animal intellect may be trained to. When four pieces of card are laid
down before them, each having a number pronounced once in connexion
with it, they will, after a re-arrangement of the pieces, select any one
named by its number. They also play at dominoes, and with so much skill
as to triumph over biped opponents, whining if the adversary place a wrong
piece, or if they themselves be deficient in a right one. Of extensive combinations
of thought we have no reason to believe that any animal is capable-and yet
most of us must feel the force of Walter Scott's remark, that there was
scarcely anything which he would not believe of a dog. There is a curious
result of education in certain animals, namely, that habits to which they
have been trained in some instances become hereditary. For example, the
accomplishment of pointing at game, although a pure result of education,
appears in the young pups brought up apart from their parents and kind.
The peculiar leap of the Irish horse, acquired in the course of traversing
a boggy country, is continued in the progeny brought up in England. This
hereditariness of specific habits suggests a relation to that form of psychological
demonstration usually called

instinct; but instinct is only another term for mind,
or is mind in a peculiar stage of development; and though the fact were
otherwise, it could not affect the postulate, that demonstrations such as
have been enumerated are mainly intellectual demonstrations, not to be distinguished
as such from those of human beings.

More than this, the lower animals manifested
mental phenomena long before man existed. While as yet there was no brain
capable of working out a mathematical problem, the economy of the six-sided
figure was exemplified by the instinct of the bee. Ere human musician had
whistled or piped, the owl hooted in B flat, the cuckoo had her song of
a falling third, and the chirp of the cricket was in B. The dog and the
elephant prefigured the sagacity of the human mind. The love of a human
mother for her babe was anticipated by nearly every humbler mammal, the
carnaria not excepted. he peacock strutted, the turkey blustered, and the
cock fought for victory, just as human beings afterwards did, and still
do. Our faculty of imitation, on which so much of our amusement depends,
was exercised by the mocking- bird; and the whole tribe of monkeys must
have walked about the pre-human world, playing

off those tricks in which we see the comicality and
mischief-making of our character so curiously exaggerated.

The unity and simplicity which characterize nature
give great antecedent probability to what observation seems about to establish,
that, as the brain of the vertebrate generally is just an advanced condition
of a particular ganglion in the mollusca and crustacea, so are the brains
of the higher and more intelligent mammalia only farther developments of
the brains of the inferior orders of the same class. Or, to the same purpose,
it may be said, that each species has certain superior developments, according
to its needs, while others are in a rudimental or repressed state. This
will more clearly appear after some inquiry has been made into the various
powers comprehended under the term mind.

One of the first and simplest functions of mind
is to give consciousness-consciousness of our identity and of our
existence. This, apparently, is independent of the senses, which
are simply media, and, as Locke has shewn, the only media, through which
ideas respecting the external world reach the brain. The access of such
ideas to the brain is the act to which the metaphysicians have

given the name of perception. Gall, however, has
shewn, by induction from a vast number of actual cases, that there is a
part of the brain devoted to perception, and that even this is sub- divided
into portions which are respectively dedicated to the reception of different
sets of ideas, as those of form, size, colour, weight, objects in their
totality, events in their progress or occurrence, time, musical sounds,
&c. The system of mind invented by this philosopher-the only one founded
upon nature, or which even pretends to or admits of that necessary basis-shews
a portion of the brain acting as a faculty of comic ideas, another of imitation,
another of wonder, one for discriminating or observing differences, and
another in which resides the power of tracing effects to causes. There are
also parts of the brain for the sentimental part of our nature, or the affections,
at the head of which stand the moral feelings of benevolence, conscientiousness,
and veneration. Through these, man stands in relation to himself, his fellow-men,
the external world, and his God; and through these comes most of the happiness
of man's life, as well as that which he derives from the contemplation of
the world to come, and the cultivation of his relation to it, (pure religion.)

The other sentiments may be briefly enumerated, their
names being sufficient in general to denote their functions-firmness, hope,
cautiousness, self- esteem, love of approbation, secretiveness, marvellousness,
constructiveness, imitation, combativeness, destructiveness, concentrativeness,
adhesiveness, love of the opposite sex, love of offspring, alimentiveness,
and love of life. Through these faculties, man is connected with the external
world, and supplied with active impulses to maintain his place in it as
an individual and as a species. There is lso a faculty, (language) for
expressing, by what- ever means, (signs, gestures, looks, conventional terms
in speech,) the ideas which arise in the mind. There is a particular state
of each of these faculties, when the ideas of objects once formed by it
are revived or reproduced, a process which seems to be intimately allied
with some of the phenomena of the new science of photography, when images
impressed by reflection of the sun's rays upon sensitive paper are, after
a temporary obliteration, resuscitated on the sheet being exposed to the
fumes of mercury. Such are the phenomena of memory, that handmaid of intellect,
without which there could be no accumulation of mental capital, but an universal
and continual

infancy. Conception and imagination appear to be
only intensities, so to speak, of the state of brain in which memory is
produced. On their promptness and power depend most of the exertions which
distinguish the man of arts and letters, and even in no small measure the
cultivator of science.

The faculties above described-the actual elements
of the mental constitution-are seen in mature man in an indefinite potentiality
and range of action. It is different with the lower animals. They are there
comparatively definite in their power and restricted in their application.
The reader is familiar with what are called instincts in some of the humbler
species, that is, an uniform and unprompted tendency towards certain particular
acts, as the building of cells by the bee, the storing of provisions by
that insect and several others, and the construction of nests for a coming
progeny by birds. This quality is nothing more than a mode of operation
peculiar to the faculties in a humble state of endowment, or early stage
of development. The cell formation of the bee, the house-building of ants
and beavers, the web- spinning of spiders, are but primitive exercises of
constructiveness, the faculty which, indefinite with

us, leads to the arts of the weaver, upholsterer,
architect, and mechanist, and makes us often work delightedly where our
labours are in vain, or nearly so. The storing of provisions by the ants
is an exercise of acquisitiveness,-the faculty which with us makes rich
men and misers. A vast number of curious devices, by which insects provide
for the protection and subsistence of their young, whom they are perhaps
never to see, are most probably a peculiar restricted effort of philoprogenitiveness.
The common source of this class of acts, and of common mental operations,
is shewn very convincingly by the melting of the one set into the other.
Thus, for example, the bee and bird will make modifications in the ordinary
form of their cells and nests when necessity compels them. Thus, the alimentiveness
of such animals as the dog, usually definite with regard to quantity and
quality, can be pampered or educated up to a kind of epicurism, that is,
an indefiniteness of object and action. The same faculty acts limitedly
in ourselves at first, dictating the special act of sucking; afterwards
it acquires indefiniteness. Such is the real nature of the distinction between
what are called instincts and reason, upon which so many volumes have been
written without profit to

the world. All faculties are instinctive, that is,
dependent on internal and inherent impulses. This term is therefore not
speciall applicable to either of the recognised modes of the operation
of the faculties. We only, in the one case, see the faculty in an immature
and slightly developed state, in the other, in its most advanced condition.
In the one case it is definite, in the other indefinite, in
its range of action. These terms would perhaps be the most suitable for
expressing the distinction.

In the humblest forms of being we can trace scarcely
anything besides a definite action in a few of the faculties. Generally
speaking, as we ascend in the scale, we see more and more of the faculties
in exercise, and these tending more to the indefinite mode of manifestation.
And for this there is the obvious reason in providence, that the lowest
animals have all of them a very limited sphere of existence, born only to
perform a few functions, and enjoy a brief term of life, and then give way
to another generation, so that they do not need much mental guidance. At
higher points in the scale, the sphere of existence is considerably extended,
and the mental operations are less definite accordingly. The horse, dog,
and a few other rasorial types, noted for their service-

ableness to our race, have the indefinite powers
in no small endowment. Man, again, shews very little of the definite mode
of operation, and that little chiefly in childhood, or in barbarism or idiocy.
Destined for a wide field of action, and to be applicable to infinitely
varied contingencies, he has all the faculties developed to a high pitch
of indefiniteness, that he may be ready to act well in all imaginable cases.
His commission, it may be said, gives large discretionary powers, while
that of the inferior animals is limited to a few precise directions. But
when the human brain is congenitally imperfect or diseased, or when it is
in the state of infancy, we see in it an approach towards the character
of the brains of some of the inferior animals. Dr. G. J. Davey states that
he has frequently witnessed, among his patients at the Hanwell Lunatic Asylum,
indications of a particular abnormal cerebration which forcibly reminded
him of the specific healthy characteristics of animals lower in the scale
of organization;. and every one must have observed how often the actions
of children, especially in their moments of play, and where their selfish
feelings are concerned, bear a

resemblance to those of certain familiar animals.*
Behold, then, the wonderful unity of the whole system. The grades of mind,
like the forms of being, are mere stages of development. In the humbler
forms, but a few of the mental faculties are traceable, just as we see in
them but a few of the lineaments of universal structure. In man the system
has arrived at its highest condition. The few gleams of reason, then, which
we see in the lower animals, are precisely analogous to such a development
of the fore-arm as we find in the paddle of the whale. Causality, comparison,
and other of the nobler faculties, are in them rudimental.

Bound up as we thus are by an identity in the
character of our mental organization with the lower animals, we are yet,
it will be observed, strikingly distinguished from them by this great advance
in development. We have faculties in full force and activity which the animals
either possess not at all, or in so low and obscure a form as to be equivalent
to non-existence. Now these

* A pampered lap-dog, living where there
is another of its own species, will hide any nice morsel which it cannot
eat, under a rug, or in some other by-place, designing to enjoy it afterwards.
I have seen children do the same thing.

parts of mind are those which connect us with the
things that are not of this world. We have veneration, prompting us to the
worship of the Deity, which the animals lack. We have hope, to carry us
on in thought beyond the bounds of time. We have reason, to enable us to
inquire into the character of the Great Father, and the relation of us,
his humble creatures, towards him. We have conscientiousness and benevolence,
by which we can in a faint and humble measure imitate, in our conduct, that
which he exemplifies in the whole of his wondrous doings. Beyond this, mental
science does not carry us in support of religion: the rest depends on evidence
of a different kind. But it is surely much that we thus discover in nature
a provision for things so important. The existence of faculties having a
regard to such things is a good evidence that such things exist. The face
of God is reflected in the organization of man, as a little pool reflects
the glorious sun.

The affective or sentimental faculties are all
of them liable to operate whenever appropriate objects or stimuli are presented,
and this they do as irresistibly and unerringly as the tree sucks up moisture
which it requires, with only this exception, that one faculty often interferes
with the action of

another, and operates instead by force of superior
inherent strength or temporary activity. For example, alimentiveness may
be in powerful operation with regard to its appropriate object, producing
a keen appetite, and yet it may not act, in consequence of the more powerful
operation of cautiousness, warning against evil consequences likely to ensue
from the desired indulgence. This liability to flit from under the control
of one feeling to the control of another, constitutes what is recognised
as free will in man, being nothing more than a vicissitude in the supremacy
of the faculties over each other.

It is a common mistake to suppose that the individuals
of our own species are all of them formed with similar faculties-similar
in power and tendency- and that education and the influence of circumstances
produce all the differences which we observe. There is not, in the old systems
of mental philosophy, any doctrine more opposite to the truth than this.
It is refuted at once by the great differences of intellectual tendency
and moral disposition to be observed amongst a group of young children who
have been all brought up in circumstances perfectly identical-even in twins,
who have never been but in one place, under the charge

of one nurse, attended to alike in all respects.
The mental characters of individuals are inherently various, as the forms
of their persons and the features of their faces are; and education and
circumstances, though their influence is not to be despised, are incapable
of entirely altering these characters, where they are strongly developed.
That the original characters of mind are dependent on the volume of particular
parts of the brain and the general quality of that viscus, is proved by
induction from an extensive rane of observations, the force of which must
have been long since universally acknowledged but for the unpreparedness
of mankind to admit a functional connexion between mind and body. The different
mental characters of individuals may be presumed from analogy to depend
on the same law of development which we have seen determining forms of being
and the mental characters of particular species. This we may conceive as
carrying forward the intellectual powers and moral dispositions of some
to a high pitch, repressing those of others at a moderate amount, and thus
producing all the varieties which we see in our fellow creatures. Thus a
Cuvier and a Newton are but expansions of a clown, and the person emphatically
called the

wicked man, is one whose highest moral feelings are
rudimental. Such differences are not confined to our species; they are only
less strongly marked in many of the inferior animals. There are clever dogs
and wicked horses, as well as clever men and wicked men, and education sharpens
the talents, and in some degree regulates the dispositions of animals, as
it does our own. Here I may advert to a very interesting analogy between
the mental characters of the types in the quinary system of zoology and
the characters of individual men. We have seen that the pre-eminent type
is usually endowed with an harmonious assemblage of the mental qualities
belonging to the whole group, while the sub-typical inclines to ferocity,
the rasorial to gentleness, and so on. Now, amongst individuals, some appear
to be almost exclusively of the sub-typical, and others of the rasorial
characters, while to a limited number is given the finely assorted assemblage
of qualities which places them on a parallel with the typical. To this may
be attributed the universality which marks all the very highest brains,
such as those of Shakespeare and Scott, men of whom it has been remarked
that they must have possessed within themselves not only the poet, but the
warrior, the statesman,

and the philosopher; and who, moreover, appear to
have had the mild and manly, the moral and the forcible parts of our nature,
in the most perfect balance.

There is, nevertheless, a general adaptation
of the mental constitution of man to the circumstances in which he lives,
as there is between all the parts of nature to each other. The goods of
the physical world are only to be realized by ingenuity and industrious
exertion; behold, accordingly, an intellect full of device, and a fabric
of the difficulties which would go to pieces or destroy itself if it were
not kept in constant occupation. Nature presents to us much that is sublime
and beautiful: behold faculties which delight in contemplating these properties
of hers, and in rising upon them, as upon wings, to the presence of the
Eternal. It is also a world of difficulties and perils, and see how a large
portion of our species are endowed with vigorous powers which take a pleasure
in meeting and overcoming difficulty and danger. Even that principle on
which our faculties are constituted-a wide range of freedom in which to
act for all various occasions-necessitates a resentful faculty, by which
individuals may protect themselves from the undue and capricious exercise
of

each other's faculties, and thus preserve their individual
rights. So also there is cautiousness, to give us a tedency to provide
against the evils by which we may be assailed; and secretiveness, to enable
us to conceal whatever, being divulged, would be offensive to others or
injurious to ourselves, -a function which obviously has a certain legitimate
range of action, however liable to be abused. The constitution of the mind
generally points to a state of intimate relation of individuals towards
society, towards the external world, and towards things above this world.
No individual being is integral or independent; he is only part of an extensive
piece of social mechanism. The inferior mind, full of rude energy and unregulated
impulse, does not more require a superior nature to act as its master and
its mentor, than does the superior nature require to be surrounded by such
rough elements on which to exercise its high endowments as a ruling and
tutelary power. This relation of each to each produces a vast portion of
the active business of life. It is easy to see that, if we were all alike
in our moral tendencies, and all placed on a medium of perfect moderation
in this respect, the world would be a scene of ever- lasting dulness and
apathy. It requires the

The indefiniteness of the potentiality of the
human faculties, and the complexity which thus attends their relations,
lead unavoidably to occasional error. If we consider for a moment that there
are not less than thirty such faculties, that they are each given in different
proportions to different persons, that each is at the same time endowed
with a wide discretion as to the force and frequency of its action, and
that our neighbours, the world, and our connexions with something beyond
it, are all exercising an ever-varying influence over us, we cannot be surprised
at the irregularities attending human conduct. It is simply the penalty
paid for the superior endowment. It is here that the imperfection of our
nature resides. Causality and conscientiousness are, it is true, guides
over all; but even these are only faculties of the same indeterminate constitution
as the rest, and partake accordingly of the same inequality of action. Man
is therefore a piece of mechanism, which never can act so as to satisfy
his own ideas of what he might be-for he can imagine a state of moral perfection,
(as he can imagine a globe formed of diamonds, pearls, and rubies,) though

his constitution forbids him to realize it. There
ever will, in the best disposed and most disciplined minds, be occasional
discrepancies between the amount of temptation and the power summoned for
regulation or resistance, or between the stimulus and the mobility of the
faculty; and hence those errors, and shortcomings, and excesses, without
end, with which the good are constantly finding cause to charge themselves.
There is at the same time even here a possibility of improvement. In infancy,
the impulses are all of them irregular; a child is cruel, cunning, and false,
under the slightest temptation, but in time learns to control these inclinations,
and to be habitually humane, frank, and truthful. So is human society, in
its earliest stages, sanguinary, aggressive, and deceitful, but in time
becomes just, faithful, and benevolent. To such improvements there is a
natural tendency which will operate in all fair circumstances, though it
is not to be expected that irregular and undue impulses will ever be altogether
banished from the system.

It may still be a puzzle to many, how beings
should be born into the world whose organization is such that they unavoidably,
even in a civilized country, become malefactors. Does God, it may

be asked, make criminals? Does he fashion certain
beings with a predestination to evil? He does not do so; and yet the criminal
type of brain, as it is called, comes into existence in accordance with
laws which the Deity has established. It is not, however, as the result
of the first or general intention of those laws, but as an exception from
their ordinary and proper action. The production of those evilly disposed
beings is in this manner. The moral character of the progeny depends in
a general way, (as does the physical character also,) upon conditions of
the parents,-both general conditions, and conditions at the particular time
of the commencement of the existence of the new being, and likewise external
conditions affecting the foetus through the mother. Now the amount of these
conditions is indefinite. The faculties of the parents, as far as these
are concerned, may have oscillated for the time towards the extreme of sensibility
in one direction. The influences upon the foetus may have also been of an
extreme and unusual kind. Let us suppose that the conditions upon the whole
have been favourable for the development, not of the higher, but of the
lower sentiments, and of the propensities of the new being, the result will
necessarily be a mean type of

brain. Here, it will be observed, God no more decreed
an immoral being, than he decreed an immoral paroxysm of the sentiments.
Our perplexity is in considering the ill-disposed being by himself. He is
only a part of a series of phenomena, traceable to a principle good in the
main, but which admits of evil as an exception. We have seen that it is
for wise ends that God leaves our moral faculties to an indefinite range
of action; the general good results of this arrangement are obvious; but
exceptions of evil are inseparable from such a system, and this is one of
them. To come to particular illustration-when a people are oppressed, or
kept in a state of slavery, they invariably contract habits of lying, for
the purpose of deceiving and outwitting their superiors, falsehood being
a refuge of the weak under difficulties. What is a habit in parents becomes
an inherent quality in children. We are not, therefore, to be surprised
when a traveller tells us that black children in the West Indies appear
to lie by instinct, and never answer a white person truly even in the simplest
matter. Here we have secretiveness roused in a people to a state of constant
and exalted exercise; an over tendency of the nervous energy in that direction
is the conse-

quence, and a new organic condition is established.
This tells upon the progeny, which comes into the world with secretiveness
excessive in volume and activity. All other evil characteristics may be
readily conceived as being implanted in a new generation in the same way.
And sometimes not one, but several generations, may be concerned in bringing
up the result to a pitch which produces crime. It is, however, to be observed,
that the general tendency of things is to a limitation, not the extension
of such abnormally constituted beings. The criminal brain finds itself in
a social scene where all is against t. It may struggle on far a time, but
the medium and superior natures are never long at a loss in getting the
better of it. The disposal of such beings will always depend much on the
moral state of a community, the degree in which just views prevail with
regard to human nature, and the feelings which accident may have caused
to predominate at a particular time. Where the mass was little enlightened
or refined, and terrors for life or property were highly excited, malefactors
have ever been treated severely. But when order is generally triumphant,
and reason allowed sway, men begin to see the true case of criminals-namely,
that while one large

department are victims of erroneous social conditions,
another are brought to error by tendencies which they are only unfortunate
in having inherited from nature. Criminal jurisprudence then addresses itself
less to the direct punishment than to the reformation and care-taking of
those liable to its attention. And such a treatment of criminals, it may
be farther remarked, so that it stop short of affording any encouragement
to crime, (a point which experience will determine,) is evidently no more
than justice, seeing how accidentally all forms of the moral constitution
are distributed, and how thoroughly mutual obligation shines throughout
the whole frame of society-the strong to help the weak, the good to redeem
and restrain the bad.

The sum of all we have seen of the psychical
constitution of man is, that its Almighty Author has destined it, like everything
else, to be developed from inherent qualities, and to have a mode of action
depending solely on its own organization. Thus the whole is complete on
one principle. The masses of space are formed by law; law makes them in
due time theatres of existence for plants and animals; sensation, disposition,
intellect, are all in like manner developed and sustained in

action by law. It is most interesting to observe
into how small a field the whole of the mysteries of nature thus ultimately
resolve themselves. The inorganic has one final comprehensive law, GRAVITATION.
The organic, the other great department of mundane things, rests in like
manner on one law, and that is,-DEVELOPMENT. Nor may even these be after
all twain, but only branches of one still more comprehensive law, the expression
of that unity which man's wit can scarcely separate from Deity itself.

We have now
to inquire how this view of the constitution and origin of nature bears
upon the condition of man upon the earth, and his relation to supra-mundane
things.

That enjoyment
is the proper attendant of animal existence is pressed upon us by all that
we see and all we experience. Everywhere we perceive in the lower creatures,
in their ordinary condition, symptoms of enjoyment. Their whole being is
a system of needs, the supplying of which is gratification, and of faculties,
the exercise of which is pleasurable. When we consult our own sensations,
we find that, even in a sense of a healthy performance of all the functions
of the animal economy, God has furnished us with an innocent and

very high enjoyment.
The mere qiet consciousness of a healthy play of the mental functions-a
mind at ease with itself and all around it-is in like manner extremely agreeable.
This negative class of enjoyments, it may be remarked, is likely to be even
more extensively experienced by the lower animals than by man, at least
in the proportion of their absolute endowments, as their mental and bodily
functions are much less liable to derangement than ours. To find the world
constituted on this principle is only what in reason we would expect. We
cannot conceive that so vast a system could have been created for a #contrary
purpose. No averagely constituted human being would, in his own limited
sphere of action, think of producing a similar system upon an opposite principle.
But to form so vast a range of being, and to make being everywhere a source
of gratification, is conformable to our ideas of a Creator in whom we are
constantly discovering traits of a nature, of which our own is but a faint
and far-cast shadow at the best.

It appears
at first difficult to reconcile with this idea the many miseries which we
see all sentient beings, ourselves included, occasionally enduring. How,
the sage has asked in every age, should a

Being so transcendently
kind, have allowed of so large an admixture of evil in the condition of
his creatures? Do we not at length find an answer to a certain extent satisfactory,
in the view which has now been given of the constitution of nature? We
there see the Deity operating in the most august of his works, fixed laws,
an arrangement which, it is clear, only admits of the main and primary results
being good, but disregards exceptions. Now the mechanical laws are so definite
in their purposes, that no exceptions ever take place in that department;
if there is a certain quantity of nebulous matter to be agglomerated and
divided and set in motion as a planetary system, it will be so with hair's-breadth
accuracy, and cannot be otherwise. But the laws presiding over meteorology,
life, and mind, are necessarily less definite, as they have to produce a
great variety of mutually related results. Left to act independently of
each other, each according to its separate commission, and each with a wide
range of potentiality to be modified by associated conditions, they can
only have effects generally beneficial:— often there must be an interference
of one law with another, often a law will chance to operate in excess, or
upon a wrong object, and thus evil

will be produced.
Thus, winds are generally useful in many ways, and the sea is useful as
a means of communication between one country and another; but the natural
laws which produce winds are of indefinite range of action, and sometimes
are unusually concentrated in space or in time, so as to produce storms
and hurricanes, by which much damage is done; the sea may be by these causes
violently agitated, so that many barks and many lives perish. Here, it is
evident, the evil is only exceptive. Suppose, again, that a boy, in the
course of the lively sports proper to his age, suffers a fall which injures
his spine, and renders him a cripple for life. Two things have been concerned
in the case: first, the love of violent exercise, and second, the law of
gravitation. Both of these things are good in the main. In the rash enterprises
and rough sports in which boys engage, - they prepare their bodies and minds
for the hard tasks of lif. By gravitation, all moveable things, our own
bodies included, are kept stable on the surface of the earth. But when it
chances that the playful boy loses his hold (we shall say) of the branch
of a tree, and has no solid support immediately below, the law of gravitation
unrelentingly pulls him to the ground, and thus he is

hurt. Now it
was not a primary object of gravitation to injure boys; but gravitation
could not but operate in the circumstances, its nature being to be universal
and invariable. The evil is, therefore, only a casual exception from something
in the main good.

The same
explanation applies to even the most conspicuous of the evils which afflict
society. War, it may be said, and said truly, is a tremendous example of
evil, in the misery, hardship, waste of human life, and mis-spending of
human energies, which it occasions. But what is it that produces war? Certain
tendencies of human nature, as keen assertion of a supposed right, resentment
of supposed injury, acquisitiveness, desire of admiration, combativeness,
or mere love of excitement. All of these are tendencies which are every
day, in a legitimate extent of action, producing great and indispensable
benefits to us. Man should be a tame, indolent, unserviceable being without
them, and his fate would be starvation. War, then, huge evil though it be,
is, after all, but the exceptive case, a casual misdirection of properties
and powers essentially good. God has given us the tendencies for a benevolent
purpose. He has only not laid down any absolute obstruction to

our misuse of
them. That were an arrangement of kind which he has nowhere made. But he
has established many laws in our nature which tend to lessen the frequency
and destructiveness of these abuses. Our reason comes to see that war is
purely an evil, even to the conqueror. Benevolence interposes to make its
ravages less mischievous to human comfort, and less destructive to human
life. Men begin to find that their more active powers can be exercised with
equal gratification on legitimate objects; for example, in overcoming the
natural difficulties of their path through life, or in a generous spirit
of emulation in a line of duty beneficial to themselves and their fellow-
creatures. Thus, war at length shrinks into a comparatively narrow compass,
though there certainly is no reason to suppose that it will be at any early
period, if ever, altogether dispensed with, while man's constitution remains
as it is. In considering an evil of this kind, we must not limit our view
to our own or any past time. Placed upon the earth with faculties prepared
to act, but inexperienced, and with the more active propensities necessarily
in great force to suit the condition of the globe, man was apt to misuse
his powers much in this way at first, compared with

what he is likely
to do when he advances into a condition of civilization. In the scheme of
providence, thousands of years of frequent warfare, all the so-called glories
which fill history, may be only exception to the general rule.

The sex
passion in like manner leads to great evils; but the evils are only an exception
from the vast mass of good connected with this affection. Providence has
seen it necessary to make very ample provision for the preservation and
utmost possible extension of all specis. The aim seems to be to diffuse
existence as widely as possible, to fill up every vacant piece of space
with some sentient being to be a vehicle of enjoyment. Hence this passion
is conferred in great force. But the relation between the number of beings,
and the means of supporting them, is only on the footing of general law.
There may be occasional discrepancies between the laws operating for the
multiplication of individuals, and the laws operating to supply them with
the means of subsistence, and evils will be endured in consequence, even
in our own highly favoured species. But against all these evils, and against
those numberless vexations which have arisen in all ages from the attachment
of the sexes, place the vast amount of happiness which

is derived from
this source-the basis of the whole circle of the domestic affections, the
sweetening principle of life, the prompter of all our most generous feelings,
and even of our most virtuous resolves-and every ill that can be traced
to it is but as dust in the balance. And here, also, we must be on our guard
against judging from what we see in the world at a particular era. As reason
and the higher sentiments of man's nature increase in force, this passion
is put under better regulation, so as to lessen many of the evils connected
with it. The civilized man is more able to give it due control; his attachments
are less the result of impulse; he studies more the weal of his partner
and offspring. There are even some of the resentful feelings connected in
early society with love, such as hatred of successful rivalry, and jealousy,
which almost disappear in an advanced stage of civilization. The evils springing,
in our own species at least, from this passion, may therefore be an exception
mainly peculiar to a particular term of the world's progress, and which
may be expected to decrease greatly in amount.

With respect,
again, to disease, so prolific a cause of suffering to man, the human constitution
is merely a complicated but regular process in

electro-chemistry,
which goes on well, and is a source of continual gratification, so long
as nothing occurs to interfere with it injuriously, but which is liable
every moment to be deranged by various external agencies, when it becomes
a source of pain, and, if the injury be severe, ceases to be capable of
retaining life. It may be readily admitted that the evils experienced in
this way are very great; but, after all, such experiences are no more than
occasional, and not necessarily frequent -exceptions from a general rule
of which the direct action is to confer happiness. The human constitution
might have been made of a more hardy character; but we always see hardiness
and insensibility go together, and it may be of course presumed that we
only could have purchased this immunity from suffering at the expense of
a large portion of that delicacy in which lie some of our most agreeable
sensations. Or man's faculties might have been restricted to definiteness
of action, as is greatly the case with those of the lower animals, and thus
we should have been equally safe from the aberrations which lead to disease;
but in that event we should have been incapable of acting to so many different
purposes as we are, and of the many high enjoyments which the varied action
of

our faculties
paces in our power: we should not, in short, have been human beings, but
merely on a level with the inferior animals. Thus, it appears, that the
very fineness of man's constitution, that which places him in such a high
relation to the mundane economy, and makes him the vehicle of so many exquisitely
delightful sensations-it is this which makes him liable to the sufferings
of disease. It might be said, on the other hand, that the noxiousness of
the agencies producing disease might have been diminished or extinguished;
but the probability is, that this could not have been done without such
a derangement of the whole economy of nature as would have been attended
with more serious evils. For example-a large class of diseases are the result
of effluvia from decaying organic matter. This kind of matter is known to
be extremely useful, when mixed with earth, in favouring the process of
vegetation. Supposing the noxiousness to the human constitution done away
with, might we not also lose that important quality which tends so largely
to increase the food raised from the ground? Perhaps (as has been suggested)
the noxiousness is even a matter of special design, to induce us to put
away decaying organic substances into the earth, where

they are calculated
to be so useful. Now man has reason to enable him to see that such substances
are beneficial under one arrangement, and noxious in the other. He is, as
it were, commanded to take the right method in dealing with it. In point
of fact, men do not always take this method, but allow accumulations of
noxious matter to gather close about their dwellings, where they generate
fevers and agues. But their doing so may be regarded as only a temporary
exception from the operation of mental laws, the general tendency of which
is to make men adopt the proper measures. And these measures will probably
be in time universally adopted, so that one extensive class of diseases
will be altogether or nearly abolished.

Another
large class of diseases spring from mis- management of our personal economy.
Eating to excess, eating and drinking what is noxious, disregard to that
cleanliness which is necessary for the right action of the functions of
the skin, want of fresh air for the supply of the lungs, undue, excessive,
and irregular indulgence of the mental affections, are all of them recognised
modes of creating that derangement of the system in which disease consists.
Here also it may be said that a limitation of the mental faculties to definite
mani-

festations (vulgo,
instincts) might have enabled us to avoid many of these errors; but here
again we are met by the consideration that, if we had been so endowed, we
should have been only as the lower animals are, wanting that transcendently
higher character of sensation and power, by which our enjoyments are made
so much greater. In making the desire of food, for example, with us an indefinite
mental manifestation, instead of the definite one, which it is amongst the
lower animals, the Creator has given us a means of deriving far greater
gratifications from food (consistently with health) than the lower animals
appear to be capable of. He has also given us reason to act as a guiding
and controlling power over this and other propensities, so that they may
be prevented from becoming causes of malady. We can see that excess is injurious,
and are thus prompted to moderation. We can see tht all the things which
we feel inclined to take are not healthful, and are thus exhorted to avoid
what are pernicious. We can also see that a cleanly skin and a constant
supply of pure air are necessary to the proper performance of some of the
most important of the organic functions, and thus are stimulated to frequent
ablution, and to a right ventilation of our parlours

and sleeping
apartments. And so on with the other causes of disease. Reason may not operate
very powerfully to these purposes in an early state of society, and prodigious
evils may therefore have been endured from disease in past ages; but these
are not necessarily to be endured always. As civilization advances, reason
acquires a greater ascendancy; the causes of the evils are seen and avoided;
end disease shrinks into a comparatively narrow compass. The experience
of our own country places this in a striking light. In the middle ages,
when large towns had no police regulations, society was every now and then
scourged by pestilence. The third of the people of Europe are said to have
been carried off by one epidemic. Even in London the annual mortality has
greatly sunk within a century. The improvement in human life, which has
taken place since the construction of the Northampton tables by Dr. Price,
is equally remarkable. Modern tables still shew a prodigious mortality among
the young in all civilized countries-evidently a result of some prevalent
error in the usual modes of rearing them. But to remedy this evil there
is the sagacity of the human mind, and the sense to adopt any reformed plans
which may be shewn to be necessary.

By a change
in the management of an orphan institution in London, during the last fifty
years, an immense reduction in the mortality took place. We may of course
hope to see measures devised and adopted for producing a similar improvement
of infant life throughout the world at large.

In this
part of our subject, the most difficult point certainly lies in those occurrences
of disease where the afflicted individual has been in no degree concerned
in bringing the visitation upon himself. Daily experience shews us infectious
disease arising in a place where the natural laws in respect of cleanliness
are neglected, and then spreading into regions where there is no blame of
this kind. We then see the innocent suffering equally with those who may
be called the guilty. Nay, the benevolent physician who comes to succour
the miserable beings whose error may have caused the mischief, is sometimes
seen to fall a victim to it, while many of his patients recover. We are
also only too familiar with the transmission of diseases from erring parents
to innocent children, who, accordingly suffer, and perhaps die prematurely,
as it were for the sins of others. After all, however painful such cases
may be in contemplation, they cannot be regarded in any other light than
as ex-

ceptions from
arrangements, the general working of which is beneficial.

With regard
to the innocence of the suffering parties, there is one important consideration
which is pressed upon us from many quarters, namely- that moral conditions
have not the least concern in the working of these simply physical laws.
These laws proceed with an entire independence of all such conditions, and
desirably so, for oterwise there could be no certain dependence placed
upon them. Thus it may happen that two persons ascending a piece of scaffolding,
the one a virtuous, the other a vicious man, the former, being the less
cautious of the two, ventures upon an insecure place, falls, and is killed,
while the other, choosing a better footing, remains uninjured. It is not
in what we can conceive of the nature of things, that there should be a
special exemption from the ordinary laws of matter, to save this virtuous
man. So it might be that, of two physicians, attending fever cases, in a
mean part of a large city, the one, an excellent citizen, may stand in such
a position with respect to the beds of the patients as to catch the infection,
of which he dies in a few days, while the other, a bad husband and father,
and who, unlike the other, only attends such cases with selfish ends, takes

care to be as
much as possible out of the stream of infection, and accordingly escapes.
In both of these cases man's sense of good and evil-his faculty of conscientiousness-would
incline him to destine the vicious man to destruction and save the virtuous.
But the Great Ruler of Nature does not act on such principles. He has established
laws for the operation of inanimate matter, which are quite unswerving,
so that when we know them, we have only to act in a certain way with respect
to them, in order to obtain all the benefits and avoid all the evils connected
with them. He has likewise established moral laws in our nature, which are
equally unswerving, (allowing for their wider range of action,) and from
obedience to which unfailing good is to be derived. But the two sets of
laws are independent of each other. Obedience to each gives only its own
proper advantage, not the advantage proper to the other. Hence it is that
virtue forms no protection against the evils connected with the physical
laws, while, on the other hand, a man skilled in and attentive to these,
but unrighteous and disregardful of his neighbour, is in like manner not
protected by his attention to physical circumstances from the proper consequences
of neglect or breach of the moral laws.

Thus it
is that the innocence of the party suffering for the faults of a parent,
or of any other person or set of persons, is evidently a consideration quite
apart from that suffering.

It is clear,
moreover, from the whole scope of the natural laws, that the individual,
as far as the present sphere of being is concerned, is to the Author of
Nature a consideration of inferior moment. Everywhere we see the arrangements
for the species perfect; the individual is left, as it were, to take his
chance amidst the mêle of the various laws affecting
him. If he be found inferiorly endowed, or ill befalls him, there was at
least no partiality against him. The system has the fairness of a lottery,
in which every one has the like chance of drawing the prize.

Yet it is
also to be observed that few evils are altogether unmixed. God, contemplating
apparently the unbending action of his great laws, has established others
which appear to be designed to have a compensating, a repairing, and a consoling
effect. Suppose, for instance, that, from a defect in the power of development
in a mother, her offspring is ushered into the world destitute of some of
the most useful members, or blind, or deaf, or of imperfect intellect, there
is ever to be

found in the
parents and other relatives, and in the surrounding public, a sympathy with
the sufferer, which tends to make up for the deficiency, so that he is in
the long run not much a loser. Indeed, the benevolence implanted in our
nature seems to be an arrangement having for one of its principal objects
to cause us, by sympathy and active aid, to remedy the evils unavoidably
suffered by our fellow-creatures in the course of the operation of the other
natural laws. And even in the sufferer himself, it is often found that a
defect in one point is made up for by an extra power in another. The blind
come to have a sense of touch much more acute than those who see. Persons
born without hands have been known to acquire a power of using their feet
for a number of the principal offices usually served by that member. I need
hardly say how remarkably fatuity is compensated by the more than usual
regard paid to the children born with it by their parents, and the zeal
which others usually feel to protect and succour such persons. In short,
we never see evil of any kind take place where there is not some remedy
or compensating principle ready to interfere for its alleviation. And there

can be no doubt
that in this manner suffering of all kinds is very much relieved.

We may,
then, regard the globes of space as theatres designed for the residence
of animated sentient beings, placed there with this as their first and most
obvious purpose-namely, to be sensible of enjoyments from the exercise of
their faculties in relation to external things. The faculties of the various
species are very different, but the happiness of each depends on the harmony
there may be between its particular faculties and its particular circumstances.
For instance, place the small- brained sheep or ox in a good pasture, and
it fully enjoys this harmony of relation; but man, having many more faculties,
cannot be thus contented. Besides having a sufficiency of food and bodily
comfort, he must have entertainment for his intellect, whatever be its grade,
objects for the domestic and social affections, objects for the sentiments.
He is also a progressive being, and what pleases him to day may not please
him to-morrow; but, in each case he demands a sphere of appropriate conditions
in order to be happy. By virtue of his superior organization, his enjoyments
are much higher and more varied than those of any of the

lower animals;
but the very complexity of circumstances affecting him renders it at the
same time unavoidable, that his nature should be often inharmoniously placed
and disagreeably affected, and that he should therefore be unhappy. Still
unhappiness amongst mankind is the exception from the rule of their condition,
and an exception which is capable of almost infinite diminution, by virtue
of the improving reason of man, and the experience which he acquires in
working out the problems of society.

To secure
the immediate means of happiness it would seem to be necessary for men first
to study with all care the constitution of nature, and, secondly, to accommodate
themselves to that constitution, so as to obtain all the realizable advantages
from acting conformably to it, and to avoid all likely evils from disregarding
it. It will be of no use to sit down and expect that things are to operate
of their own accord, or through the direction of a partial deity, for our
benefit; equally so were it to expose ourselves to palpable dangers, under
the notion that we shall, for some reason, have a dispensation or exemption
from them: we must endeavour so to place ourselves, and so to act, that
the arrangements which Providence has

made impartially
for all may be in our favour, and not against us; such are the only means
by which we can obtain good and avoid evil here below. And, in doing this,
it is especially necessary that care be taken to avoid interfering with
the like efforts of other men, beyond what may have been agreed upon by
the mass as necessary for the general good. Such interferences, tending
in any way to injure the body, property, or peace of a neighbour, or to
the injury of society in general, tend very much to reflect evil upon ourselves,
through the re-action which they produce in the feelings of our neighbour
and of society, and also the offence which they give to our own conscientiousness
and benevolence. On the other hand, when we endeavour to promote the efforts
of our fellow-creatures to attain happiness, we produce a re-action of the
contrary kind, the tendency of which is towards our own benefit. The one
course of action tends to the injury, the other to the benefit of ourselves
and others. By the one course the general design of the Creator towards
his creatures is thwarted; by the other it is favoured. And thus we can
readily see the most substantial grounds for regarding all moral emotions
and doings as divine in their nature, and as

a means of rising
to and communing with God. Obedience is not selfishness, which it would
otherwise be-it is worship. The merest barbarians have a glimmering sense
of this philosophy, and it continually shines out more and more clearly
in the public mind, as a nation advances in intelligence. Nor are individuals
alone concerned here. The same rule applies as between one great body or
class of men and another, and also between nations. Thus if one set of men
keep others in the condition of slaves-this being, a gross injustice to
the subjected party, the mental manifestations of that party to the masters
will be such as to mar the comfort of their lives; the minds of the masters
themselves will be degraded by the association with beings so degraded;
and thus, with some immediate or apparent benefit from keeping slaves, there
will be in a far greater degree an experience of evil. So also, if one portion
of a nation, engaged in a particular department of industry, grasp at some
advantages injurious to the other sections of the people, the first effect
will be an injury to those other portions of the nation, and the second
a re-active injury to the injurers, making their guilt their punishment.
And so when one nation commits an aggression upon the property or rights

of another,
or even pursues towards it a sordid or ungracious policy, the effects are
sure to be redoubled evil from the offended party. All of these things are
under laws which make the effects, on a large range, absolutely certain;
and an individual, a party, a people, can no more act unjustly with safety,
than I could with safety place my leg in the track of a coming wain, or
attempt to fast thirty days. We have been constituted on the principle of
only being able to realze happiness for ourselves when our fellow creatures
are also happy; we must therefore both do to others only as we would have
others to do to us, and endeavour to promote their happiness as well as
our own, in order to find ourselves truly comfortable in this field of existence.
These are words which God speaks to us as truly through his works, as if
we heard them uttered in his own voice from heaven.

It will
occur to every one, that the system here unfolded does not imply the most
perfect conceivable love or regard on the part of the Deity towards his
creatures. Constituted as we are, feeling how vain our efforts often are
to attain happiness or avoid calamity, and knowing that much evil does unavoidably
befall us from no fault

of ours, we
are apt to feel that this is a dreary view of the Divine economy; and before
we have looked farther, we might be tempted to say, Far rather let us cling
to the idea, so long received, that the Deity acts continually for special
occasions, and gives such directions to the fate of each individual as he
thinks meet; so that, when sorrow comes to us, we shall have at least the
consolation of believing that it is imposed by a Father who loves us, and
who seeks by these means to accomplish our ultimate good. Now, in the first
place, if this be an untrue notion of the Deity and his ways, it can be
of no real benefit to us; and, in the second, it is proper to inquire if
there be necessarily in the doctrine of natural law any peculiarity calculated
materially to affect our hitherto supposed relation to the Deity. It may
be that while we are committed to take our chance in a natural system of
undeviating operation, and are left with apparent ruthlessness to endure
the consequences of every collision into which we knowingly or unknowingly
come with each law of the system, there is a system of Mercy and Grace behind
the screen of nature, which is to make up for all casualties endured here,
and the very largeness of which is what makes these

casualties a
matter of indifference to God. For the existence of such a system, the actual
constitution of nature is itself an argument. The reasoning may proceed
thus: The system of nature assures us that benevolence is a leading principle
in the divine mind. But that system is at the same time deficient in a means
of making this benevolence of invariable operation. To reconcile this to
the recognised character of the Deity, it is necessary to suppose that the
present system is but a part of a whole, a stage in a Great Progress, and
that the Redress is in reserve. Another argument here occurs-the economy
of nature, beautifully arranged and vast in its extent as it is, does not
satisfy even man's idea of what might be; he feels that, if this multiplicity
of theatres for the exemplification of such phenomena as we see on earth
were to go on for ever unchanged, it would not be worthy of the Being capable
of creating it. An endless monotony of human generations, with their humble
thinkings and doings, seems an object beneath that august Being. But the
mundane economy might be very well as a portion of some greater phenomenon,
the rest of which was yet to be evolved. It therefore appears that our system,
though it may at first appear at

issue with other
doctrines in esteem amongst mankind, tends to come into harmony wih them,
and even to give them support. I would say, in conclusion, that, even where
the two above arguments may fail of effect, there may yet be a faith derived
from this view of nature sufficient to sustain us under all sense of the
imperfect happiness, the calamities, the woes, and pains of this sphere
of being. For let us but fully and truly consider what a system is here
laid open to view, and we cannot well doubt that we are in the hands of
One who is both able and willing to do us the most entire justice. And in
this faith we may well rest at ease, even though life should have been to
us but a protracted disease, or though every hope we had built on the secular
materials within our reach were felt to be melting from our grasp. Thinking
of all the contingencies of this world as to be in time melted into or lost
in the greater system, to which the present is only subsidiary, let us wait
the end with patience, and be of good cheer.

THUS ends a book, composed in solitude,
and almost without the cognizance of a single human being, for the sole purpose
(or as nearly so as may be) of improving the knowledge of mankind, and through
that medium their happiness. For reasons which need not be specified, the
author's name is retained in its original obscurity, and, in all probability,
will never be generally known. I do not expect that any word of praise which
the work may elicit shall ever be responded to by me, or that any word of
censure shall ever be parried or deprecated. It goes forth to take its chance
of instant oblivion, or of a long and active course of usefulness in the world.
Neither contingency, can be of any importance to me, beyond the regret or
the satisfaction which may be imparted by my sense of a lost or a realized

benefit to my fellow-creatures. The book,
as far as I am aware, is the first attempt to connect the natural sciences
into a history of creation. The idea is a bold one, and there are many circumstances
of time and place to render its boldness more than usually conspicuous. But
I believe my doctrines to be in the main true; I believe all truth to be valuable,
and its dissemination a blessing. At the same time, I hold myself duly sensible
of the common liability to error, but am certain that no error in this line
has the least chance of being allowed to injure the public mind. There fore
I publish. My views, if correct, will most assuredly stand, and may sooner
or later prove beneficial; if otherwise, they will as surely pass out of notice
without doing any harm.

My sincere desire in the composition
of the book was to give the true view of the history of nature, with as little
disturbance as possible to existing beliefs, whether philosophical or religious.
I have made little reference to any doctrines of the latter kind which may
be thought inconsistent with mine, because to do so would have been to enter
upon questions for the settlement of which our knowledge is not yet ripe.
Let the reconciliation of whatever is true in my views with

whatever is true in other systems come
about in the fulness of calm and careful inquiry. I cannot but here remind
the reader of what Dr. Wiseman has shewn so strikingly in his lectures, how
different new philosophic doctrines are apt to appear after we have become
somewhat familiar with them. Geology at first seems inconsistent with the
authority of the Mosaic record. A storm of un-reasoning indignation rises
against its teachers. In time, its truths, being found quite irresistible,
are admitted, and mankind continue to regard the Scriptures with the same
respect as before. So also with several other sciences. Now the only objection
that can be made on such ground to this book, is, that it brings forward some
new hypotheses, at first sight, like geology, not in perfect harmony with
that record, and arranges all the rest into a system which partakes of the
same character. But may not the sacred text, on a liberal interpretation,
or with the benefit of new light reflected from nature, or derived from learning,
be shewn to be as much in harmony with the novelties of this volume as it
has been with geology and natural philosophy? What is there in the laws of
organic creation more startling to the candid theologian than in the Copernican
system or the

natural formation of strata? And if the
whole series of facts is true, why should we shrink from inferences legitimately
flowing from it? Is it not a wiser course, since reconciliation has come
in so many instances, still to hope for it, still to go on with our new truths,
trusting that they also will in time be found harmonious with all others?
Thus we avoid the damage which the very appearance of an opposition to natural
truth is calculated to inflict on any system presumed to require such support.
Thus we give, as is meet, a respectful reception to what is revealed through
the medium of nature, at the same time that we fully reserve our reverence
for all we have been accustomed to hold sacred, not one tittle of which it
may ultimately be found necessary to alter.